One last visit to the month of December...

Look what I found! Somehow the official Santa Portrait for the year got by me and I haven't even put this up on Facebook. This was our third and last Santa visit, but was the only one that took place at an actual mall. The girls look a little rumpled despite my attempts to straighten them up while in line, a couple of hours of playing in the mall play area with a horde of children will do that to you, but they were very happy to see Santa.

Santa, no doubt trying to avoid being sued for some sort of inappropriate behavior, was not happy that I had put Elizabeth in a fairly short skirt that day, and kept asking David and I to fix her skirt so she wouldn't be showing her Cinderella underpants to posterity. Of course he was too polite to actually mention the problem directly, but we knew why he kept trying to fix things. Elizabeth, who is quite comfortable in the nude, not to mention with her undies on display, did not understand the fuss and was not cooperating with the way we were trying to get her to sit. Poor Santa. But since we had not planned to see Santa (this was a normal day's outfit coordination, not something special), it is own fault for wooing us to his line with his jolly "Ho, Ho, Ho"s.

Right? Right.

What? This is the end of January?

So! December happened! Not only did December happen, but January is passing quickly by. I was on blogging hiatus at the time (I'm still on hiatus, or at least that is what I'm telling myself so I don't scare myself away from my blog), so I pretty much missed the month. But hey! We did stuff. And because I will most likely be inundating the Internets the week after our trip to Disney (which is SOON!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA! <----that was joy), with a detailed trip report, I didn't want to leave a big hole in my timeline.

Do you know how hard it is to distill a month down into less than 10 pictures? Especially when you took 561 pictures in December, but your husband is getting cranky at you for stealing his bandwidth while he's (WoW) raiding?

It is pretty hard.

But. In December I learned to French Braid Lilli's hair. And she patiently let me do it. And proudly wore my sloppy first attempt. Woohoo! That's a good child for you.

In December we baked cookies with Sprite and Jen. It was a blast.

In December we decorated gingerbread houses. The one on the right, thickly coated in candy is Elizabeth's. She was displeased when we ran out of candy.

In December there were many forced poses. With family members, with Santa during visits number 2 and 3, at various scenic views, and of course in front of the Christmas tree.

That last one is from when Nana and Papa (my in-laws) visited us.

As should be no surprise, the majority of my 561 December photos are of Christmas Day. But I will spare you. Let's just say that there was joy at the sight of the tree,

More forced posing in front of it,

Excitement over the smallest thing,

And general joy in the day.

We also attended my work Christmas party, spent a TON of time at various parks enjoying the availability of decent weather, had play dates, and ran around like crazy people doing our Christmas shopping, but I will keep those photos to myself for now. And of course to spare myself the whines from the guy over at other computer.

Oh yes, and we ate The Ham. That really added to the month. There are few foods in this world that I love as much as I love The Ham, but I only buy it at Christmas. I can't justify the expense or the gorging during the rest of the year.

So that was December. A good month! And I say this every year, but this, of course, was our best Christmas ever, despite our efforts to conserve our funds. The economizing we did made no dent in the good time we all had.

You know, I feel pretty ready to take on January, so maybe you'll see a few pictures and posts about this month in the next couple of days. We haven't done much this month, but you would never know that from the pictures!

Spin Cycle: Happiness is...blogging again?

Let me tell you about things that make me happy, why I took a blogging hiatus, and why I may or may not continue it.

Point the first: I love my children. They make me happy. Working full time as I do, I see them between 2 and 3 hours a night on the week days. That is just not enough. So I spend every second in their presence from the moment I walk in the door after work until the moment I walk out of my younger daughter's bedroom at night. And since I am apparently not allowed to go the bathroom alone, I literally mean every second.

Point the second: I think I have an addictive personality. It is a good thing I'm not into smoking or drinking or illegal substances, because I suspect I would do them heavily. Because if I get into something I get into it HARD. I have to really enjoy it to get into it, but if I do, watch out. So yes. My name is Rachel and I am addicted to Farmville. And Petville. And a host of other Zynga games on Facebook. I am very happy with this obsession, and it has not lessened yet, although I hear that will come.

Point the First plus Point the Second equals Point the Third: All my free time in a day happens between 8pm and whatever time I collapse. In that time (anywhere from 2 to 4 hours generally) I need to clean my kitchen, prepare things for the next day, pick up some of the toys that are more likely to cut or bruise you if you step on them, do crazy things like pay bills, and now I also "have" to harvest crops, collect eggs, shear sheep, brush cats, feed pets and fish, virtually cook things like Triple Berry Cheesecake, and send virtual presents from multiple games to a host of people (this sounds like work but makes me happy). I used to blog during that chunk of time (that made me happy too). I also have about 20 minutes in the morning to myself, which I use for showering and reading other people's blogs (this also makes me happy), not working on my own blog (not so happy about that).

So yes. I have been unable to summon the energy to post after my frenzy of left-clicking is over. But blogging used to be a stress reliever for me in a way that mindlessly clicking on sheep and goats is not, so I want to get back into it. Baby steps though. Perhaps 2 day crops instead of 24 hour ones so I have less obligations in the virtual world at night. Or perhaps my upcoming family trip to Disney World next week will cut me off cold turkey from my addiction, as I will not have internet access for a shocking number of days. We'll see.

So, to encourage me, help me out with another thing that is preventing me from blogging. It's been an on-going problem, but now I'm so annoyed by it that I need to be vocal (It is REALLY not making me happy). Does anyone know what to do if your camera's memory card uploads your pictures out of order? The pictures are in order when the memory card is in the camera, and the computer copies them to its memory in the same order that they appear on the selection screen that lets you choose which pictures to upload, but on that screen the are all mixed up. I take hundreds of pictures of my children (probably only 20% are ever seen by anyone other than my family), I like them in chronological order, and it is a major PAIN IN MY BEHIND to have to rename all the pictures so they will be in order. This has not always happened on this computer, and it stared happening before I got my new camera, so those aren't easy reasons why this is happening, but it is annoying and I'm finding it super easy to use this as an excuse for not blogging, since re-ordering the pictures would take time that I am currently spending playing games on Facebook and re-connecting with people I have not talked to in 10 years. Anyone have any ideas? Please comment me at my personal e-mail or the blog e-mail, which, if you happen to have just stopped by for the first time today, is rachelsramblings at gmail dot com.

That will make me happy.

And to see more things that make people happy, or make them unhappy, or make them think about happiness, head on over to the Spin Cycle, brought to you by Sprite's Keeper.

She will be happy you did.

I'm not...

...dead yet.

Just lazy.