Let the Holidays Begin

I love the holiday season.  I love all the traditions, decorations, lights, family, Christmas, presents for the kids, baking...it's a month long festival that begins on Thanksgiving day.  We traditionally put up our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  First, Jeff hangs the lights on the outside of the house.  Then he puts together our tree.  The branches get all scrunched from being in the box for a year, so I am the official "fluffer".  This year I recruited Sara to learn "the art of fluffing".  She did an excellent job!

After I fluff, Jeff puts on all the lights.  Then the kids hang the ornaments.  And it goes in the same order every year...first the clear balls that go on over the lights...it makes the tree look like it has brightly lit bubbles all over it.  I love it.  Then the kids put on the different colors of glass balls...only one casualty on the tile floor this year so far.  After the plain glass ones they then put on the family ornaments.  Jeff's mother usually gets each kid a "special" ornament each year for Christmas.  She buys a lot of the Hallmark ornaments, and they are really nice.  I am very happy with our tree.  We leave it lit 24/7 and I get a smile every time I pass by it.  I was a little sad about the photo because it just doesn't capture the sparkle of the tree very well, and you can't really see the brightly lit "bubbles", but here it is:

Sara really gets into the holiday spirit.

In addition to Christmas we have Sara's birthday on the December 11th.  Her middle name is Noel, as her due date was Christmas Eve and she is a Christmas time baby.  This year she's having her first "real" party with friends coming over and a huge day planned.  She is getting a bounce house from 1-5.  We'll have pizza when the bounce house goes, then we'll have cake and presents, and then the girls can play games until 8:00.  Long day!  She's so very excited.  I'll post pics of her birthday afterwards.

Another big event....my girls both got their braces off on Monday!  This was Sami's 2nd time getting them off because the first time one of her teeth went crooked again so she had to have them back on for another 6 months.  This is also Sara's first go around with braces.  This time around she had her palate spread and her front teeth pulled down and straightened to fix all the gaps and damage done to her teeth from her sucking her thumb until she was 5 or 6.  ugh!  If only I had known.  She will wear a retainer during the night for about 2 years and then get a full set of braces to correct all her teeth when she's about 12.  oy.  But their teeth are gorgemous!

Sports are done for a few months...whew!  Made it through another fall season!  But we've had a lot of school activities to make up the difference.  Matthew finished his Science Fair project tonight, and he is very proud of his work.  His project question was "do different cheeses mold at different rates".  His hypothesis was that out of cheddar, parmesan and pepper jack, the pepper jack would mold the fastest.  And because I know you are just dying to know the answer, the pepper jack didn't mold one bit in 6 weeks.  The cheddar molded in the 2nd week and produced lots of oils.  The parmesan produced some oils and didn't mold until right at the end of week 6.  So there you have it.  We called it "Dairy Dairy Moldy Cheese" as a play on words for "very very moldy cheese".  Here is a picture of Matthew with his project.  And please ignore the sink of dishes in the background. lol

The other day I had another win.  I won a Spiderman: Edge of Time game for the Xbox 360!  We got it in the mail yesterday, so that is a $50 freebie going under the tree for Matthew.  yea!  The beginning of November I won a $100 gift card to Value City Furniture.  I was pretty excited.  Until I discovered that they don't have any stores anywhere near the state of Arizona and they don't sell over the internet.  :(  So I listed the gift card on eBay and sold it last night for $45.  It would have been nice to be able to buy that nice lamp I had all picked out, but either I got to use $0 of the card or take the $45 and call it a day.  And $45 was more than I started with, so I ended up being pretty happy.  And the buyer got a great bargain.  I also won a movie pass recently for a super nice theater chain here.  Jeff received a gift from the football team for coaching...a $25 gift card to Outback.  Between that and the one movie pass, that's half a dinner/movie date paid for.  Good deal, huh?  I'm looking forward to going on a date sometime next month.  It's been a long while since we've done anything together.

Jeff is working hard...50-60 hours/week.  It's either no work or he's working 6 days a week.  lol.  Where's the medium?  But I certainly am NOT complaining!  We've got a lot of catching up to do.  I am so grateful that he's working and I'm thankful for all of my internet friends who kept us in their prayers.

What have you been up to?  Have you been busy with the holidays?  Baking?  Crafting?  Travels?  Give me the run down...I would love to hear from you!

I'm a Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

How lucky are you?  Have you won very many things over your lifetime?  Bingo?  Lottery?  Raffles?  Radio contests?  When I was younger I used to win quite a bit of different things.  Winning is fun.  It's also very addicting.  One day a couple months ago I watched a show on I think TLC (could have been A&E) called Extreme Sweepers.  Have you ever heard of extreme sweepers?  I hadn't either until that day, and then after the show I went to my computer and started right away because it seemed like a lot of fun on the show.

So what is it?  People who make a living off  entering all kinds of sweepstakes and contests.  It's mostly done by internet, but there are still mail-ins and local businesses will often have give aways for products or services.  So I spend about 2 hours a day on the computer and I enter about 175-200 contests every day.  Sounds like a lot?  There are short cuts to make it speedy like automatic form fillers so you just click a button and your info gets filled in on the form. Then there are websites that list contests and allow you to keep track of single, daily, weekly, and monthly entry contests. 

A lot of people say it can take 6 months to a year to start seeing results from your efforts because the contests often last a long time before they close.  Some people enter every contest imaginable because whatever they win that they don't want they turn around and sell on ebay for cash, which is how they make a living at this.  I don't enter everything.  If I don't particularly want the prize, then I don't enter.  I also don't enter sweepstakes for trips unless it's to a college football bowl game, a trip to Ireland, or a trip for the family to Disneyland.  But even though I've only been doing this for 2 months, I already have some small wins under my belt.  I even got another one this afternoon. 

So far I have won a $25 Visa gift card, a prize package from V8 worth about $100 (includes products and a $25 WalMart gift card), a full size tube of fancy mascara, a free movie ticket, (hehehe...get this one) a decorative toilet paper roll canister, a bottle of carpet cleaner and today I won a fleece throw from Sealy Mattress.  My winnings come to a retail value of about $180.  The only only prizes I've actually received so far are the movie ticket voucher and the Visa card, and the rest of the stuff can take up to 10 weeks to arrive.  But when my things start coming in it will be like Christmas when the mailman comes.  And I'm actually looking forward to seeing what design I get on the silly little toilet paper canister.  lol

All of these little wins I'm hoping are a good omen of bigger prizes to come.  I'll keep everyone posted periodically on what I've won.  It's fun!  You should try it!