I have always thought that we needed a day in which to recover from a weekend. Today is no exception!

Our weekend in thumbnails, a lot of fun and quite a bit of sushi…

Our new universal remote, picked up Friday. It’s so cool to be able to turn on the TV and change channels from the couch! Of course the only one available at the drug store was bigger than the girls’ heads… It’s really unlikely it will get lost now, though! That’s always a positive!

Our friend JadenKale came to visit from Wisconsin, and spent the afternoon with the girls. Then, they went to my mom’s house for the night, and she & I went out to eat. Mmmm… boatload of sushi! Mmmmm…. and yes, we ate the whole thing!

My dear friend S sent us some sculpy sushi beads for Christmas which her kiddos had made - they are so, so, so cool! We have such incredibly awesome friends! We started by making some sushi earrings. It was fun wearing the earrings while eating the sushi!

S and her kiddos also sent us some sushi soap for our bathroom. Our bathroom is also really cool for having a shower curtain, so this is just another step cooler. A sushi bathmat would be great too, someday…

I took JadenKale for a scenic tour of the North Shore of Massachusetts, and we got a great view of the Boston Skyline and some Frostbiters (people who sail in winter). I didn’t take pictures of those, though, sorry.

We ran a couple errands (took another person for their first Trader Joe’s experience!), and by then the sun was setting - this is the first in a series of 4 sunset pictures over a cove down the hill from our house. Sooo pretty!

From the Ministry of Silly Poses - I strike a robot pose with a shiny tin hat from a Christmas Cracker and a tin man shirt from TeeFury, and each of the girls pose with a beautiful, soft scarf from JadenKale. (I got a lovely burgundy one, but no pose because it didn’t fit in with the robot silliness) The scarves are really cool and can end up being used as hats as well as scarves - we’ll need to take a better pic, but that’s what LG is doing in the blue scarf.

Before she left, we had to take good bye pictures. It was sooo hard to say goodbye! I really hope we can see her again soon, but going to “America’s Dairy Land” is an unlikely destination for us, so we’ll have to wait for her to visit us again. Soon, I hope!

This past weekend seemed magical. We were all sad we couldn’t make it to church, but other than that it was perfect.

We had great fun, great food, and a great friend who enjoyed being with all of us - what more could we really want? Other than to have it last a lot longer and include even more sushi, of course! We’re keeping our smiles today as we get back into our usual routine, and hope we can continue to meet in person with the wonderful people we’ve gotten to know online. May all of your days be filled with the magic of friendship!

2008 has been an amazing year. A year of many changes, and one that has ended on a very hopeful note. We have had so much go on in our lives this year, I have yet to figure out a pithy end-of-year letter.

We are celebrating tonight with a newly cleaned fridge and a newly-cleaned living/dining room - an almost ritualized cleansing of the area as we begin anew. We have a pretty blue sign up for the new year, and a new calendar ready to take charge.

We have a big buffet of food - fizzy juices, edamame, baby carrots, a mini-antipasto, multi-colored tortilla chips, regular hummus, kalamata olive hummus, guacamole, salsa, and some tofu for the hummus-disdainer. I wish I had remembered black eyed peas, but we’ll put chick peas in tomorrow’s big salad as a place-holder.

We have a bunch of board & card games to play - from Monopoly to Scrabble, UNO to Frogjuice, and everything in between - Jenga will definitely make a big bang!

For “hard stuff”, we are talking about our wishes for the New Year, reflecting on our accomplishments from 2008, praying about our challenges in 2008, and discussing our resolutions and commitments for 2009. I do think that resolutions and commitments are different - we may resolve to make changes in our behaviors, but we can also commit to doing something. Both actions and our hopes are important, and so we are writing down our wishes, our commitments, and our resolutions for 2009. We’ll also be reading some scriptures together, as what better way to bring in a New Year together than with some timeless words?

Pictures will come later. For now, Happy New Year from the Gaggle!

As with all visits with NannyOgg of the 7, yesterday’s visit started with a bang! That was me falling down the stairs. I’m OK, just a bit bruised in the hand & tailbone and in extra fun pain. Ow! And now we have a major snowstorm, just in time to upload a pic from our last snowstorm!

Giant and Ra had a lot of fun running around together in the yard with the 8 kids. Giant has grown so much! He’s the same size as Ra now, and Giant is 4 months old, while Ra is 11 1/2 months old - I forget how much bigger Labs are from ACDs! They are adorable together, and I’d have pictures if I wasn’t sitting there thinking “ow! ow! ow!” instead of taking pictures. Silly Rachel. However, I’m sure that the ones NannyOgg took will rock!

I may never have been a Boy Scout, but I do like to Be Prepared! So I checked availability of all the Nintendo DS Lite colors the girls wanted (pink, red, blue), and the local Target had them in stock according to the website. So we all (8 kids, 2 pups, 2 adults) went to Target, and I took 5 girls inside, only to find out that they were out of stock of every color of Nintendo DS Lite.

Here’s where we get into Horrible Customer Service Land - rather than saying “I’m so sorry the website was misleading, let me help you order it online from here, we can toss in a free overnight shipping code”. Or even, “I’m sorry we’re out, they will be back in stock on xxxx day, can I set aside one for you in a specific color?” We could even accept, “I’m sorry the website wasn’t accurate, can I help you find anything else?” We were in Horrible Customer Service Land, though, so we got “The website sucks, it never updates right. I think they have some next door at Best Buy, though.”

A quick tip to people working in retail - it is really, really, really not considered OK to send your customer to your competitor to purchase something. Especially not when the customer already had a negative experience with your Customer (dis)Service earlier in the week (when visiting Horrible Customer Service Land don’t try to do anything without a receipt, not even do a like-for-like exchange. Not even when the item didn’t work out of the box..).

Because part of our budget for buying the Nintendo DS Lites involved a Target Gift Card, we went to Best Buy and got 2/3 of the Nintendo DS Lites. BG & MG are sharing with LG until LG’s arrives from Target online.

Meanwhile, the 8 kids and 2 puppies played in the yard, the parking lot, the van, and then in the house! They weren’t fussy. We also had a wonderful (if expensive) trip to Trader Joe’s. Sadly they were out of the yummy, salty, crunchy green beans, we’ll have to get back there soon when they are restocked! Mmmmm… We got plenty of yummy chips & dips and some salami & salad fixings, as well as several delicious fizzy juices for New Year’s Eve.

We arrived home to find our oldest dog missing, which meant some crazed driving around calling for her, only to have her appear by the back door 30 min after NannyOgg and crew left. Of course! Never a dull moment! NannyOgg also brought her nasty weather with her, so were dealing with a s*** storm. Thank goodness we have no errands to run! It’s pretty watching the snow falling if we are warm and cozy and well fed inside!

I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a gigundo bag of the good kind of Gummi Bears, which even have a 25% off code of BEARGUMM…. what a great way to ring in the New Year!

I have had a bit of a problem with my camera cable (yay for the people on eBay selling them for $1!), so you’ll have to wait a bit for more Christmas pics.

I’ve decided to stop thinking until the New Year, as well. I may decide to buy a couple of Amazon’s 50 $5 cd mp3 downloads from the top CDs of 2008. But otherwise my brain has thought enough for a while.

Tomorrow we’ll be playing with Nanny Ogg and a few kids and a puppy. 8 kids and 2 puppies = a whole lot of cuteness! Plus we get to indoctrinate her into the joys of Target & Trader Joe’s.

We’ll be playing games on New Year’s Eve, and then anyone who is awake will watch the ball drop with some Trader Joe’s fizzy juice. It’s a fun little tradition, and much calmer than trying to go to a big, busy, party and traffic. My husband and I stayed with an uncle & aunt for New Year’s once, and we continued their tradition of making silly hats, which I highly recommend!

Anyone have a fun little tradition to pass on?

After a wonderful Christmas eve party with my parents and a lovely visit to their church for the caroling service, we came home to set up for Santa.

The stockings were hung by the window with care, in hopes that Santa would fill them with gifties.

The girls each opened 1 present, and because Mom was slow on the giftwrapping, they opened a present from one of their sisters. We set out cookies, milk, and carrots for Santa & the reindeer, then went upstairs for stories and to check up on Santa. We read the nativity story in the Bible, and then followed it up with The Polar Express and tracked Santa with NORAD.

The girls were exhausted from a busy afternoon of playing with their cousins, so they fell asleep quickly after seeing that Santa was getting closer to where we live. We’re all excited to visit with family again tomorrow and then to visit with great-grandparents on Friday. Family is at the forefront of our Christmas, along with our new faith.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas filled with joy and hope!

Children bonding over a warm fire. OK, we don’t have a fireplace, but …

We uploaded a new video that was less dark, and it includes instructions for you to do the trick yourself! If you wanted to, you could pretend that the fire popping up in the air is like the star appearing over Bethlehem…

note - have talk with kids about fire safety!

As we grow closer and closer to the celebration of the miracle of Christmas, we are looking for miracles in the world around us. We have the joy of lengthening days after the solstice, and the celebration of the miracle of Hannukah.

If you’ve told the story of the miracle of Hannukah and are looking for a new-to-you story, definitely check out The Flying Latke. The latke goes airborne and is classified as a UFO, which is a fun twist. I have a love of miracles, and there are several miracles in the book.

We are celebrating our own little miracles - friends and family are wanting to help right when help is needed. The dvd/vhs player that wouldn’t play dvds of the box was brought back to Target (hereby referred to as The Place of Bad Customer Service), and TPoBCS refused to exchange it for a working model without a receipt. When we got home with it, though, it played a dvd right away.

Tomorrow we are swapping a download of Firefox for some scotch tape. Bartering is great! I wonder if I can barter with a neighbor, fudge for shoveling…

We had an up and down weekend this weekend. It was cold when we ran out of oil, but we snuggled together and then it got really warm & toasty when the oil man came! Not having the van on Friday to go swimming & run errands was sad. But The snow was fun! Mommy burning the first 2 batches of fudge sucked Playing in the snow with the puppy was awesome! Church closed wasn’t good, we missed our friends. Getting the van on Sunday afternoon was good, but the weather and driving sucked. But hot cocoa with a snowball in it is yummy.

I attempted to do something “educational” and teach the girls a magic trick with a teabag to make sure they have a good memory at the end of today. Sadly, the video is really dark, we’ll have to remake it during daylight. But if you are patient and like fire (or screaming girls or barking dogs), check it out on youtube.

I tell “Uncle A…” stories. These are all stories of things my younger brother has done (fallen over a waterfall, jumped off a train, shot a bb gun…), all things which the girls can learn from his mistakes rather than making he mistakes themselves.

A good lesson! Well, unfortunately I hadn’t told a particular story in a while…

When I was around 9 and my brother around 5, he ran one of his little motorized cars over my head. As background, we had been making different obstacle courses for the Rough Rider 4×4, and the next logical step was, of course, to run it over my head.

At that time I had very long hair, probably down to the middle of my back. What my brother and I didn’t think about was what the result would be of combining long hair and battery-operated wheels.

It was a Bad Thing. The wheels pulled my hair into the axle. because the on/off switch was on the bottom of the truck, once it spun against my head we couldn’t turn it off. I remember that pain vividly. My mom ended up having to cut it out of my hair.

Yesterday, my A child (LG) put her sister’s motorized hamster against her head so it would climb over her. It was like repeating history, I had to cut the hamster out of her hair. Thankfully the hamster only had 2 wheels, not 4, and that she has shorter hair than I did! It was good to have less hair snipped from her head.

Let this be a lesson for you:
Don’t let children whose name begins with the letter A play with motorized toys with wheels!
(or, don’t play with battery-powered wheeled toys near hair)

Our plans for the weekend were changed unexpectedly when our agreement for van sharing was canceled by my husband. We had some errands to run before he snow came, but that didn’t happen. We were all very disappointed we couldn’t go swimming with our friends his morning, sudden changes of plans are never easily accepted.

Now we are snuggling under blankets, watching the snow, listening to he wind, and enjoying some books and videos. We especially like snow that falls hard enough to make our black dog look speckled!

We’ll try to make some fudge again (my candy thermometer broke, and so the first batches burned), make some cookies, make snowmen, and play tomorrow. I’m sure the weekend will be lovely, even though different than what we had planned. I’m just so tired of having to change plans and tired of expending he energy to try and explain things to the girls.