My sister Maureen called me tonight. She lives in Atlanta, her son is in kindergarten. There was a note in his backpack that said they were going to cancel the Christmas ornament making craft day if they didn't get any parent volunteers. She asked me if I had many homemade ornament ideas. I glanced over my shoulder at my beautiful 12 foot tree with pretty twinkling lights and couldn't help but notice the dozens of tacky homemade ornaments (all towards the back) that my wonderful sweet children have made me. I have reindeer made of plastic spoons, Christmas light bulbs, pipe cleaners, clothes pins, popsicle sticks and of course my personal favorite, paper. I have a lovely block of wood with a Santa painted on it with a string on the end, a large three dimensional ball made out of recycled Christmas cards, silver flat orange juice can ends sprinkled with glitter with a wallet size photo, needles to say I am fresh out of ideas for homemade ornaments anyone could hang on the front of the tree. I told her I would examine my tree and if I came up with a good idea I would call her back. All kidding aside the picture above is of my favorite Christmas ornament. Erin/Sybil made this when she was little. This one is always proudly displayed right in front!!

Dave is up on the roof working on putting up our Christmas lights. I asked why he waited for it to get dark? He borrows our neighbors ladder every year and he wanted to wait until he got home to borrow it. I told him that I have their garage code but he didn't want to take it without asking. I'm sure the neighbors would rather watch him fall off the roof in the dark. Obviously they trust us if they gave us the code. Who am I to argue, I'm sure there is a method to his madness.

A kid in my design class asked me where I hide all of my kids Christmas presents? I told her I stick them all in the dishwasher, they will never think to look in there. Yesterday, before I took Dave to Urgent Care, I loaded the dishwasher, put the soap in and asked Erin to start it in a half hour. She had used all of the hot water taking a 45 minute shower. (could she have been that dirty?) I went to unload it after school today and the soap was still in it. I knew I should have went ahead and ran it with cold water.

Tuesday when we were working on the St. Anthony report I was reading out loud to Ryan about St. Anthony's life. (Erin was sitting at the table with us). I sometimes interject my own spin on things when I am reading out loud to bring a point home and to make sure my kids are paying attention. Anyway, I read,"St. Anthony spread the good news and preached in Italy as well as in France and he never, ever drank vodka on Halloween." Erin said "funny mom, that was stupid." Ryan wanted to put that on his report as one of the five facts about St Anthony. (at least he was listening)

Someone made a comment about Aids tonight at dinner. Shannon said "is that the disease where you wash your hands all the time and keep things really neat?" OCD, Aids, I can see where she could confuse them, they are practically the same thing. Shannon, what are you thinking, I think the twenty two teaspoons of liquid Advil you took this week are starting to affect your brain. Aside from the fact that they each have three letters there are no other similarities.

Kelsey was home sick today, I think it would be easier to just call the school secretary in the morning and let her know which one of my kids would be at school instead of which ones would be absent.