Oh F@&%#

Hmmm...if your child comes complaining to you that their eye has been hurting today and you take a gander and see that it is red and goopy it probably doesn't mean good things. I am waiting to see what things look like tomorrow, but we may be in for the next chapter of "The House Where Germs Live and Attach to Young Children Every G-D Week."

I was really hoping for an illness free holiday season this year. If you go back to the holiday time postings on this blog, you will get the history of sickness on Christmas for this family. Apparently it is our tradition.

I for one am really looking forward to Christmas this year. I hope that this doesn't come off as me being a commercialized Christmas person because I am not...but a big reason that I am excited is that for once we have managed to decide on gifts that will be meaningful to nearly every person on our Christmas list and make them happy I think. In particular our children and parents will be very pleased.

I am really excited to give people their gifts and I am having a hard time keeping quiet about it.

So maybe if I put it out here it will get me by until the big day.

The gift I am most excited about is the kitten we have just adopted for #2. She has been wanting a furry lovey pet that is hers (we have the old lady cat, we got the dog for #1) and she was all geared up for a Guinea Pig as some of you may recall. Well when it came down to it, BH and I just could NOT bear the thought of another rodent in the house (#1 also has a hamster). However we had kind of already said that she could get it if she had the money. Well she will after Christmas and we do the annual "see how much we have in the savings bank each child has and let them spend some if they wish" day. My response to BH when we talked about how much we don't want a Guinea Pig I said that I would far rather have another kitten before getting a GP. BH agreed and it was decided that a kitten would be procured for Christmas. We went to the shelter yesterday and found a teeny tiny 6 week old mostly black kitty with a white nose and mouth. Oh is she cute! I could expire from the cuteness. We finished the adoption paperwork today and will pick her up from the vet Thursday afternoon. She will spend the weekend with Grammy and Poppie and we will go get her Monday night after the kiddies are in bed. Can't Wait. #2 loves kitties more than anything and is constantly talking about the cats she will have when she grows up. This child is going to be over the moon. I wish I had a digital video camera so that I could show her reaction. Wait! My camera takes short videos!!! If it goes like I think I will try and post it here. At the very least I will post pictures of our new baby.

Speaking of pictures we are way excited about the gifts we chose for our parents. They are eternally disappointed in our lack of sharing/taking pictures of the children. So this year we got 4 digital photo frames and are loading them up with pictures of the kiddoes. This will be especially nice for my dad who is on the road and away from home from October through June.He gets pretty homesick and we hope this will help him out a little. My mom hopefully will stop harassing me about how she has no new pictures to put up at work. It will be easy now!

We also adopted a family this year. The girls each have a bank that they put a dollar a week from their allowance in to for charitable donations. We have said that we will match any donation they make from their bank. We all decided to use the funds to adopt a family. That delivery happens Saturday and we are very excited about it. I am glad that the kids for a change will get to see directly the recipients of their generosity. Past donations have been to organizations and I think that it is too abstract concept-wise for them to really understand what they are doing.

All in all our house/family has been bursting with Christmas surprises.

As always I am interested in the surprises that others are keeping this season!