Back to the grind. Loud children trapped inside a very messy house that's not nearly big enough when it's -11 outside. How did my house get so messy so fast? It's insane how fast it goes from picked up to tornado-ish. We've been home for 2 days and it already looks like vagrants have moved in. At least my neighbors didn't have to call the cops this time. When we were gone to Denver for Thanksgiving, my neighbors thought they saw something suspicious in our house so they called the police to come check it out. He had just had all of his stuff stolen out of his car, so I don't blame him for calling just in case. Anyway, they came over and he let them in with his key. The place was trashed. Stuff everywhere. It looked like the place had been tossed! Then my neighbor just explained that our house always looks like that. There was nothing amiss, thank God. I'm just embarrassed. I could make a statement along the lines of--I will never let my house look like that again so that I don't have to be embarrassed again. But we all know it would be a lie. So I won't bother. I'm not fooling anyone. I recover from my shame pretty quickly.
I should be unpacking right now since I still have bags that have not been touched since Vince brought them in from the car, but this is much more fun and way more cathartic. Also, my kids have things from Christmas that they haven't had a chance to play with yet, so they are just out everywhere until they play with it a few times and then we find a place to stuff it. Most of their new stuff stays packed in the car until we get home so that we are not losing pieces along the way. We got home late Wednesday and jumped right into school and YMCA on Thursday so they literally have not been able to play much at all. We had a great time though. We got to see V's brother, his wife and their daughter and his parents, then we headed south to Texas until we were stopped by the blizzard in El Reno, OK just outside of Oklahoma City. It was nasty. Who would have thought that we'd go south to get into cold weather? We were forced to stop over Christmas Eve. By the morning, the hotel was full with other stranded motorists. Vince tried to go across the street to get us some food for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, but he couldn't even make it that far. We were told that there was one Chinese restaurant still delivering, the crazy bastards!, so we ordered LOTS of food before it was too late. Fa, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra!! I would post the one picture that I got to take before my camera died of my kids waking up on Christmas morning in the hotel, but I haven't seen my camera since then. I'm sure it's here somewhere. Then we had to wait until later the next morning to leave because the interstates were still closed in some places and were horribly messy. We saw over 100 cars in the ditches along the way and could only travel below 45 MPH the entire trip. It was awful. But we finally made it and were able to spend some time with my parents and brothers and their kids and all my mom's siblings and children. It was really nice. Then we headed back to Oklahoma to see V's sister and nephew that we haven't seen in at least 2 years. We also spent some time with his Uncle and his family at the family farm and met up with his cousin and wife at one of our favorite restaurants in Canadian, TX. Here's my shameless plug--if you're ever out that way you HAVE GOT TO STOP THERE! It's called The Cattle Exchange. Their ribeyes are to die for. www.cookya.com is the website. I was also able to spend some time with good friends that I went to high school with and some people that I used to work with at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. All in all it was a nice holiday for us, aside from the weather that blew in. When we got home, we immediately started shoveling because there were 4' drifts blocking in his work truck. Ugh! It's been so cold everywhere it seems like. Even my parents said that it's supposed to get down to 4 degrees tonight down there. V and I are a little tired of all this cold. Maybe it's time for a move south?
Of course, we all ended up with a stomach bug. It never fails. When we travel someone ends up puking. At least this time it wasn't in the car. 4 of us woke up one morning with stomach troubles and that night, the kids all started with it. I think Vince was the only one who escaped unscathed, but that just meant that he was the chosen one to watch all the kids, including the visiting niece. Let me tell you, he was NOT happy! Luckily it was just a 24 hour thing. I almost wish it would have lasted a little longer. I needed to purge a few more of these holiday pounds that are following me around! I said almost, okay? I'll just get back into my workout routine to get rid of these hitchhikers. I don't think that Chelada that I just downed is going to help though. Maybe I'm a lost cause. I did do my new workout video today. It's the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Boot Camp video. They're good. Talk about motivation! I would do squats until my legs fell off if my ass would look like that when I was done. Wow. My problem is not the working out part surprisingly. It's the eat-it-all-until-it's-gone part that I can't make myself give up. I inherited that from my dad. We eat anything. And we eat it until it's all gone. Even if it's something that we don't really like. I need a food counselor!
So, I have a funny story about Katie and my nephew Grayson. They were playing and Katie said to Grayson, "Hey, you wanna chase me?" But in Katie-speak it sounded a lot like, "Hey, you wanna taste me?" So he did. He licked her face and then looked up with a huge grin! She just stood there with a look that said, "Uhhhh, what just happened?" It was too funny! Grayson is one busy little boy. He wears me out just watching him. I told Vince that I hoped Sam was not that busy and he replied that he already is. He's right. It's just that Grayson is bigger and able to get into more stuff. Gee, I can't wait!
Well, the kids are in bed and I think I will go watch some mindless TV for a while before I hit the hay too. My bed is the warmest thing in this house. The heater can't seem to keep up when it's so cold out. Time to snuggle in! Goodnight.
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