In case anyone wonders and is reading this, I am going to suspend this blog until further notice.  I know, I know.  You're heartbroken.  Actually, no one really reads it except for a good friend of mine.  Feel free to petition people to read it and the overwhelming response might just force me back into action.  And if not, well, I'm pretty sure the world will go one without one more random blog.  Hopefully.

We have a Christmas Eve tradition in our family.  Wait... how many years does it take to make something a tradition?  Two?  Five?  I guess if you have kids, then it's a tradition if you do it more than once, even if by accident.  Like, say, you have spagetti for dinner the night before their birthday two years in a row.  Not on purpose, but suddenly it's a tradition that can't be broken and heaven forbid you try to have tacos the next year.  Not that I'd know anything about that.

Anyhow, our pseudo tradition is one that I don't really want to keep up.  It's that someone is sick on Christmas Eve.  Last year it was the oldest, who had the flu and kept throwing up, but was recovered in time to open presents on Christmas.  This year it's me.  Does it make me a bad parent to wish it were them?  I mean really, what do they have to do today?  Despite feeling like I've been run over with a truck I've still managed to get the dogs from the kennel (we were gone for a few days and got home last night at midnight), go to the grocery store, make lunch, clean the house, and wrap a crapload of presents today.  Still haven't managed a shower yet, but it's only 2:40 so there's still time. 

Right now I'm going to take a break.  Have some tea, which will hopefully clear out my head so I can breathe because I'm partial to getting air in my lungs, and catch up on the football scores.  We've already decided to forego the Christmas Eve dinner (I am SO not up to cooking that tonight) and just have pizza instead.  I'm pretty sure the kids will appreciate that.

When bad things happen to good people.  You hear it all the time in the news and think "that stinks" and then promptly forget about it.  Well, here's the latest one.  It's about a man who goes to the doctor with worries and after tests is told that everything is ok.  Then, months later, he's diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer.  What makes this so horrible is that I know the guy.  I did MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers.  A fantastic organization if you have little ones) at his church when my kids were small.  Many of my good friends go to his church.  I am friends with his wife.  It's the sort of thing that makes you feel helpless. And what's most amazing is that he hasn't lost his faith or gotten angry.  There's a lesson in that.  Anyhow, if you want to read more or are just morbidly curious, check out his blog:

Randy's Blog

Another one of my friends just announced that she's pregnant.  They all just hit the end of their first trimester, so everyone is letting the world know they are expecting.  But what's strange about this is that all of them are having their first kid.  It's all my friends that missed the first round of babies when we were in our mid-20s, so now that we are in our mid-30s, they are all getting pregnant.  My husband asked me if it makes me sad or makes me want another kid, and I can honestly say no to that.  I am so thrilled that my kids, while not very little anymore, are competent.  They can walk, they can can dress themselves, feed themselves, they are potty trained, they can get themselves in/out of the car.  They are functioning people.  It's really nice.  The only thing I miss about the baby stage is the cuddling, because there's nothing quite like holding a sleeping baby that snuggles up into your chest.  But I'll trade that for kids that can go without naps, allowing us to do more stuff each day, and I'll get my baby snuggle fix in about 6 months when all my friends have their babies.

We put up our outside lights this past weekend and noticed that no one else seemed to have any up.  Then I saw this on my way out this morning.

Now, in theory, this should convince people to put up more lights, but somehow I think it's just incentive for people to actually put up lights.  I mean really- there are 1500 houses in our neighborhood (I still get lost driving around), and maybe 200 of them have up lights.  Really?  As someone who loves Christmas, I think that's just kind of sad.  On the up side, maybe it means that we'll win!

Call me a dork, but when this

came in the mail today, I was pretty excited.  The yarn is called Cherry Chip and is shades of brown and dark red.  I'm working on making a blanket for my mom.  It was supposed to be for Christmas, but that isn't going to happen, so I am shooting for her birthday in February.  I couldn't find the yarn in any store around here, so I had to order it online.  I'm a bit miffed because when I looked for it online it was $2.50/skein (yep- we're talking real quality stuff here), but when I got around to starting the project and ordering it a couple weeks later it was up to $4 a skein.  Rats.  At any rate, it's going to be beautiful. 

What the heck happened to my post? 

We'll try this again.

I ran the Freedom 5K and it was the most fun race I've ever run.  The race was in honor of the Army/Navy game and so each person had to pick a team- either Army or Navy (as a side note, the Navy bibs were printed in Blue and said Go Navy). 

Much of the course was lined with little American flags, and around the 3-mile mark people were handing out mini flags to the runners so you could carry one to the finish.  Not only was the course beautiful, but it was a little bit road and a little bit trail, so it was intereseting.  The top 100 finishers got a commerative dog tag (if you care, I was 74th overall and 3rd in my age group), and the first "team" with 50 people to finish won the race overall.  In this case, it was Army (yea!).  So everyone with an Army bib gets some cool free stuff- a t-shirt (the race gimme was a knit hat), running socks, pizza, popcorn, coffee, etc.  Nice!