Final Thoughts of 2010: A Recap

Wow, 2010 has been a crazy, fun-filled, full-of-surprises year for me.  I've been unbelievably blessed this year and my family has been as well.  I can't believe tomorrow will be 2011.  I remember being in junior high back in the mid-90s and people would say, "I bet by 2010 we'll be driving flying cars and have robot maids."  Not quite.  Although Joan Rivers is fast becoming creepily similar to Barbie - in her 60s.  I bet she'll be the first robot chick.  With lip injections.

I figured the best way to recap the year is to just list the high points of the year for me.  Some of the events are from other people - sports teams, celebrities, etc., but they all contributed to making this year an awesome one!

January 24, 2010 - NFC Championship game at the Superdome in New Orleans with my New Orleans Saints beating the Minnesota Vikings 31-28 in overtime after Garrett Hartley kicked a beauty of a fieldgoal.  Saints going to the Superbowl for the first time in franchise history!

February 7, 2010 -  My New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Superbowl XLIV.  Who dat! Bless you boys!

 

 

 

February 9 - Parade held in New Orleans celebrating the awesome season of our Saints kicks off Mardi Gras Carnival Time.  Attended too many parades and nearly froze to death in the process, but had a ball.  Laissez les bon temps rouler!

February - Winter Olympics are always fun, but the US tore it up this year! I loved watching Bode Miller, Shaun White, Julia Mancuso, Evan Lysacek, Apollo Ohno and Lindsey Vonn do their thing.  I don't care what the sport is, I'll watch it!

March - Took a short four-day trip to Tennessee to visit the fam, and had a great time.  Went to my most favorite place in the world, Cades Cove. 

April - Made the decision to return to school.  Thought I was crazy.

May 6 - My birthday!

The summer was basically spent with me reading People Magazine and US Weekly, watching Friends and Dexter reruns and wondering if they really would send Lindsay Lohan to jail this time....

August 18 - First day back at school.  I was terrified and thrilled.  So glad I went back!

September 1 - Celebrated my three-year anniversary with the Hubs.  Yay!  I also hit my 100th post milestone that same week. 

September 2 - NCAA Football Season began.  Yes.

September 9 - NFL Season officially begins in the New Orleans Superdome with my Boys hosting the Minnesota Vikings.  My boys won 14-9.  Again, Who Dat!

For most of September, October and November I did a lot of studying and watching football.  That's about it.

December 9 - Took the last final of my first semester back at school, finished out the semester with a 3.68 GPA and made the President's List.  Wohoo!

December has been nothing but Christmas, Christmas, Christmas! 

Had a wonderful time with my family this year, as we do every year.  My girls had an awesome Christmas and received way too many gifts.  We were definitely blessed.

In retrospect, the year was kind of uneventful if you take away the sports excitement.  It was still a good year though.  My babies are healthy, I love my husband, my family is well and all is good in my hood!

What was the best moment of 2010 for you guys?

I wish you all a blessed, wonderful and happy new year! Salud!

Also, a huge THANKS to my guest bloggers for the week.  You guys rock my socks off! Love y'all!

'Twas the day before Christmas

Don't worry, I'm not going to rhyme.

Today is my second-most favorite day of the year, mostly because it's the prelude to CHRISTMAS, but also because everyone is bustling around, cooking, wrapping presents and getting everything ready for that delightful day less than 24 hours away.

Every year my Mom has a Christmas Eve party, and this year they're finally letting me contribute finger foods. They don't trust me enough yet to prepare actual meals. One of these days...

Anyhoo, I was going to just make pigs in a blanket, because they're a crowd favorite and they're super easy. Then Brandi over at Twenty-Something Florida Wife shared her chocolate-peanut butter fudge recipe yesterday, and I was thrilled!

I've been wanting a good peanut butter fudge recipe for years, but nobody has had one. So, later today I will be making Brandi's fudge, and I'm sure it will be delightful. Thanks, Brandi!

Hubs and I opened our presents to each other last night, because we like Christmas morning to be all about the kids - for now, anyway - and he gave me an Amazon Kindle, which I love! I also received some new shoes, diamond stud earrings and accessories for the Kindle. Momma's happy. I gave Hubs an XBox 360 Kinect and a game everybody is apparently wanting, Black Ops or something like that. He was thrilled, so I did good. Oh, I also created a shirt online at Custom Ink for him;

It's hilarious, and he loved that, too. (He's been joking all semester that he's married to a college chick and that's hot. What a nerd.)

So, now we are looking forward to tonight's party and tomorrow morning, when we'll get to watch our daughters open presents and squeal delightedly over the ridiculously massive amount of Disney Princess stuff. After that we'll head over to Mom's so the girls can do presents there, then we'll spend the rest of the day at my grandparent's house with the family. It's such a wonderful time, and I very much enjoy my family, so it will be a great day.

THEN (I know, this is getting ridiculous) we'll be leaving on Sunday headed to the Smoky Mountains and my most favorite state of the US - Tennessee. I can't wait to see my Dad, baby sisters and family up there. Make sure you guys stop in next week and check out my guest bloggers! They have written some great posts!

I hope you all have wonderfully fantabulous Christmases - those who celebrate, anyway. For the rest of you, just have a smashing Saturday! Love and kisses, y'all!

See, what happened was...

I thought once I finished finals it would be rest and relaxation, maybe a little Christmas shopping here and there...

Afraid not.

First, the DAY I finished finals, Hubs came down with strep throat.  Over the weekend, Hayden started running high fever...trip to the ER revealed she also had strep throat.  Then, two days later, Anna catches it.  So I spent most of last week taking care of three sick children.  (Note:  Hubs is actually 28, but when he's sick, he might as well be a five-year-old.  Males.)

A couple of visits to doctors later, Hubs and kids are feeling better. 

Yay. 

In between taking the kids to the doctor and babying Hubs I was super-busy at work planning and decorating for our annual Christmas dinner.  My boss, the Pastor, is older and apparently has an abundance of free time to come up with these crazy schemes and decoration ideas - this would normally be cool, but since I'm the secretary, that means I'm the one who has to try and make his ideas come to life.  These ideas usually take two or three days to complete. 

Luckily I'm brilliant and was able to pull everything together, and our dinner on Thursday night was a smashing success.  Yay.

Friday I cleaned house, finished Christmas shopping, wrapped presents and started packing for us to spend the weekend at Hub's parent's house in Baton Rouge.  All in all a great day, especially when Hubs brought in the mail and I discovered a letter from my school informing me I made the President's List. 

Woohoo! 

I was so excited and moved that I cried.  It sort of felt like validation for me - letting myself know that hey, I can actually do this - even with a husband and two children and a home to take care of and a job to keep.  Just call me Superwoman. 

I rode that high all the way through the weekend, and I'm still feeling pretty giddy about it now.  Hubs put the letter on the fridge, which is adorable and lets me know he's super proud of me.  

Our "Christmas Weekend" with Hub's family went well.  The girls received entirely too many gifts, as usual.  We hit the jackpot with cash prizes and some gift cards and pretty awesome gifts.  Made it back home this afternoon, had lunch at my grandparent's house, watched the Saints lose to the Ravens (boo) and then went to church for our Christmas Candelight Service.  

Whew.  

So, that's what I've been up to - not that y'all really cared.  This vacation is turning out to be not so much a vacation as much as more work for Jess.  How strange.  

Movie Delight Monday: Christmas Edition #2

If you haven't completely immersed yourself in Christmas by now, you're either not a Christmas celebrator or you're a scrooge.  If you're like me, you've already watched every single Christmas movie you own at least three times.  Now that we have kids, we tend to watch the cartoons more than anything else, but I'm attempting to ease them into White Christmas and a few other grownup films.  Unfortunately Christmas Vacation can't be watched until the kiddos are in bed.  Language, among other things. 

I love ABC Family this time of year because they make so many cute little Christmas movies.  (We all know I love all things cheese.)

To continue the sharing of my most favorite Christmas films, I've picked four of the best for today.  Ready?  Alrighty then.

The Santa Clause

Tim Allen cracks me up as sarcastic Scott Clavin.  Also, Charlie's ex-wife's husband Neil (played by the awesome Judge Reinhold) is hilariously dimwitted.

Neil: "Scott, what was the last thing you and Charlie did before you went to bed Christmas Eve?" 

Scott: "We shared a bowl of sugar, did some shots of brown liqour, played with my shotguns, field-dressed a cat, looked for women..."

Rudolph the Red-Nosed  Reindeer

I don't know anyone who doesn't love this classic.  Hermey the elf is my favorite character. 

 "I want to be a dentist!"

Home Alone

You know, Macaulay Culkin - back before he spent all of that time with Michael Jackson....

I'm not making accusations, but COME ON.

"Keep the change, you filthy animal."

Scrooged

This comedy is a classic in its own right.  Bill Murray as the scrooge Frank Kross, with one of the best ghosts in the history of ghosts - Carol Kane - as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

"Niagara Falls, Franky Angel."

Next Monday will be the last Christmas Edition of Movie Delight Monday.  I plan to cover at least five more.  Let me know what your favorites are!  I'll cover some suggestions, I promise!

Today was awesome.

A little mini-Birthday party for Anna, who will turn two on Thursday.

Then all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren made Christmas cookies together.

Followed by a surprise visit from Santa!



Anna wouldn't sit on Santa's lap. 



All in all, a great day!

The little lights aren't twinkling, Clark.

Hey guys.  I'm back.  I've really missed writing on my blog and following my blogging buds, keeping up with you guys.   I am trying to get back into the swing of things, so bear with me.  Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me. 

I'm sharing a post from last year with you to get the ball rolling,  and will (hopefully) soon have some new stuff for you!  Cheers!





Well y'all, it is officially the most wonderful time of the year:

CHRISTMAS.

This is - by far - my most favorite time of year.  All of the Christmas specials on television, Christmas music playing endlessly on radio stations, those people dressed like Santa with bells outside Walmart.  The tree, the lights, the window decals.  The PRESENTS.  Ah, Christmas, I think I love you. 

Not to mention - and those of you who are not people of faith, don't get angry - the celebration of the birth of my Lord, Jesus Christ.  I am a Christian, and as such believe completely in the birth of Jesus to Mary, coming to earth in the form of man to later be sacrificed so that we all could be saved.  Some of my readers are athiest or of different faiths, and that's cool.  I think it's great that we can all be blogging buds and accept each other's similarities AND differences without offending each other.  So yay for bloggerhood.  (I hereby claim the rights to the word "bloggerhood."  All use of the word will be credited to me, Jess. Please and thank you.)

So anyhoo, for Movie Delight Mondays this month I will share my most favorite Christmas movies in all of their fantabulousness. I'll pick three or four each week since there are only four weeks in December and I obviously have more than four favorites.  Now that I think of it, we should petition Congress to make December eight weeks instead of four.  We could do away with August.  I mean, really, what's good in August?  Nothing.  Who's with me?!

Okay, I've rambled enough.  For today I'm going to share my three MOST favorite Christmas movies, simply because I love them so much and don't feel like waiting until the week of Christmas to write about them.  I won't be giving actual reviews because I'm assuming that we've all seen these movies at least once in our lives.  Here we go.....

Christmas Vacation

If you've never watched this movie starring Chevy Chase as the hilarious Clark Griswold, Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie and a plethora of other awesomely funny talents, then it is my suggestion you either watch it immediately or be flogged.  (I don't really even know what that means, but I hear it's bad. I'm assuming it's similar to being tarred and feathered.)

I spend ALL year waiting for Thanksgiving day, just so I can start watching this movie.  As a rule I do not watch it at all from January 1st until Thanksgiving Day.  It makes for a very exciting Turkey Day!

White Christmas

I actually didn't watch this musical until 2006 when hubs brought it home one night.  He had found it at the store and went on and on about how he couldn't believe he'd never bought it before because it's just the best Christmas movie EVER.....all the while I'm staring at him, confused, because we both know Christmas Vacation is the best Christmas movie EVER.   After a brief explanation of who Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby were I caved and agreed to watch it - especially after the realization that this is the movie Clark was referring to in Christmas Vacation.  LOVED IT.  This is such a classic, wholesome, good-natured, fun musical, and Danny Kaye is really funny.  I even developed a small crush on him. 

Even if you aren't a huge fan of musicals, it's still a pretty good watch.  Check it out!

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Toddler.  Kid.  Preteen.  Teenager.  Young adult.  Adult.  Old folk.  Doesn't matter what age you are, this movie rocks.  Every year I find myself wishing the film was just a little bit longer.  Thirty minutes of Grinch and Max just isn't enough.  P.S.  When in Home Alone 2 Tim Curry grins and then a shot of the Grinch flashes looking almost exactly the same....awesome!

The Jim Carrey version is just okay, which surprised me because I LOVE Jim Carrey.  Can't beat the original.  Sorry, Jim.

Check back next Monday for another group of my favorite Christmas films!  Comment and share yours, or blog about them, too!

Black Friday, OR Something I Won't Be Doing Next Year

I want to tell y'all about my Black Friday shopping experience.  My mother and I, despite our better judgment, decided to go to Walmart for the Midnight Madness experience.   Hah.  My mom wanted to get one of those Barbie Jeep things for my girls, and it was going to be on sale for $88.00.  You can't beat that, so of course we had to try to get one. 

We arrived at the store at 10:35, and when we walked in the door I knew it had been a bad idea:  there were a gazillion people in there.  No, really, I counted.  It was a gazillion. 

We made our way back to the bike section where the little kid vehicles are usually stocked, only to meet a half dozen other people looking for the same Jeep.  It was nowhere to be found.  My mom and another lady became fast friends, and decided to go look through the store to see if the jeeps were somewhere else.  I waited patiently next to a tattoo-covered couple, a really redneck family (seriously, they had maybe six teeth between the four of them) and one normal-looking couple that made me feel a little bit better. 

Ten minutes later my mom and her new friend returned, and mom had that bull-in-a-china-shop look on her face.  Not good.  They had discovered that there were only THREE of said Jeep at the store, and all three had been "reserved" earlier in the day.  WHAT. THE.  FRICK.  Three?!  THREE?!  I swear, if I knew where old man Sam lived, I would have driven to his house last night, knocked on his front door and punched him in the face. 

So, resigned to the fact that we wouldn't be getting the Jeep, we decided to look for other possible deals we were interested in.  Mom found a few things to get for some people, and I found a few Disney Princess things to get for the girls.  We set up shop and waited for midnight.

Apparently the Walmart employees were told that if they didn't act like shopping Nazis they'd all be fired, and they took it seriously.  If you looked too long at an item, they'd be on you like white on rice and a glass of milk with a paper plate in a snowstorm.  (Man, I love that phrase.)  Twice I saw people get scolded for picking up items to look at them.  At the same time, though, every once in a while we'd see someone walk by with a buggy full of crap, and not a single worker said anything to them.  This ticked off the other shoppers (ie:  me and mom), and a revolt of sorts began rising among us.  Who took the lead?  My mother, of course.

She began encouraging people to just grab what they wanted and put it in their buggies.  What could the workers do?  Nothing!  "What's good for the goose is good for the gander,"  she'd say.  Frankly, the situation was altogether hilarious to me.  My mother - sweet, kind, church choir leader, Nana to my kids - was promoting misbehavior.  Well, I thought it was a great idea, as did many of the people around us, who began sticking items into their buggies.  We were a band of rebels.  The Midnight Madness Rebels, if you will. 

I started daydreaming about how we'd all end up on the news.  They'd sell t-shirts that read "Midnight Madness Rebels Unite" and "Screw You Sam."  I'd be on the Today Show, talking about how our revolt led to reform for Black Friday shopping internationally.  Mom would have to hire security to fight off the angry former Walmart employees who were all fired for failing to keep us crazy shoppers from putting items into our buggies for one measly hour.  We'd end up in history books. 

My little reverie was interrupted by, of course, a Walmart employee repeating for what must have been the hundredth time, "The items are not on sale until midnight.  Please do not put them into buggies."   

Then some invisible signal must have been made, because suddenly - at 11:46 - plastic began flying away from stacks, boxes were being pulled from them and it was utter chaos. 

CHAOS.

People were shoving each other, pushing through the crowds, trying to get this item or that.  I was impaled (nearly) by the corner of a rather heavy box when the man behind me, who couldn't see over said box, almost trampled me in his attempt to get a deal. Mom and I, having grabbed the two items we wanted, decided to roam through the store and see what else we could get. 

We made our way over to the clothing section, which happened to be next to the movies that were on sale.  There were more people here than over by the toys, which surprised me.  I remember thinking for a moment how obviously against fire codes this ridiculousness must be, and someone should probably call the fire marshall.  Then I found PJs for the girls for $3.50 and forgot about it.

Twice we saw police rushing through the crowds, I assumed to break up fights since they all had their hands on their holsters.  At one point I was waiting with the buggy in a "safe" area while mom had decided to brave the DVD area, and a lady walked by and attempted to steal something out of our buggy.  I politely said, "Um, excuse me?"

"I need this,"  she replied.

"Well, they're over there," I said, pointing in the general direction.  She gave me a sarcastic look for a second, then changed it to look pitiful.

"But I need it!  I have a special needs child." 

Oh no, you didn't.

"Well, ma'am, I'm sorry you have a special needs child, but they're still over there.  This is mine."

Again, I pointed.

She stared at me for a moment, then huffed and walked off.  I breathed a sigh of relief, becuase I really wasn't in the mood to fist fight a 40-something year-old woman and possibly end up in jail.  No, thank you. 

Finally mom returned with five movies and we were ready to go.  Luckily most of the mele was still going on throughout the rest of the store, so the checkout lines weren't too terribly long.  We checked out and were out of there by 12:45. 

Next year, I'll just shop online.