My Christmas movie list

There is an ice storm outside, a fire in the fireplace and an awesome movie in the DVD player--White Christmas. (We only briefly lost power this afternoon--kind of a bummer. I was prepared for it to be out all evening. I was looking forward to the adventure. I wonder if I really could have made chicken noodle soup in the dark? I guess now we'll never know.) Anyway, it made me think of what great Christmas movies there are. So here are a few of my favorites (in no particular order--not sure I could put them in an order...):

• White Christmas (of course! maybe someday I'll convice my sister to sing the sister song with me)
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Lost in Paradise (love this one!)
• The Christmas Story (and no, it does not involve a nativity scene--only a really ugly leg lamp)
• The Santa Clause
• Home Alone (we watched this one this afternoon before we lost power)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original--not Jim Carrey's version)

Well, I'm sure I've missed some good ones, but we are almost to the scene where they sing the sister song and I don't want to miss it. So, if you want to add anything, feel free in the comments.

My Christmas train

For the last several years I have wanted a train to run under my Christmas tree. Have you ever priced the trains that run underneath the Christmas trees? That has pretty much put the big NO to me wanting a train. That and the fact that I have 2 boys ages almost 4 & 2--seriously can I really expect them not to play with a $100 train? So anyway I was at a store (let's just say the store had the word "Dollar" in it) a couple of weeks ago and came across my dream train. Okay, it wasn't my dream train, but it was at my dream price. And who cares if when you turn it on it sounds like an actual freight train is in my house--it looks great and if the boys mess with it I'm only out about $5. Yeah me!

Nathan's lounge chair

The bathtub has become my son's new lounge chair. At the risk of being, ahem, too revealing, I only included a headshot. You can imagine that his feet are crossed, because they are. And when I came in his hands were behind his neck. This has become his traditional bathroom pose. Getting him out is no picnic either--of course, I wouldn't want to be pulled from my warm lounge chair either.

My planned spontaneous fun

I had a friend comment to me yesterday that she really appreciated how fun loving I was. I left lunch feeling a little perplexed because I certainly wouldn't describe myself like that. Then I got to thinking about it--I am fun loving at heart. In fact, before I had children, I was extremely spontaneous and fun loving. One weekend when we lived in Dallas we drove 5 hours to San Antonio to spend only about 4 hours there on Saturday morning before we had to drive back. We decided to go about 3pm on Friday afternoon. It was a blast! We did that kind of stuff all the time. So I decided yesterday evening that I was going to be more intentional about having some fun. Well, this morning while we were eating breakfast out, we were discussing what we were going to do if we lost power today. (We are in the middle of an ice storm again (we had one of these in March too). What are the odds of that? Joe said do you live in the Midwest? Well, I guess that answered my question to what the odds of that are) Anyway, we decided we were going to play UNO by candlelight if we lose power. Then I came up with the great idea that we could play UNO by candlelight even if we didn't lose power. It was at this point that I said to Joe, very proud of myself, that see I can be spontaneous and fun. Joe's response "Yeah, if you have plenty of time to plan for it." Ahh, once again he speaks the truth.

The fairytale wedding

We've been discussing next summer's family vacation and one of the options was Tennessee. This also happens to be where Joe & I went on our honeymoon. Yesterday I mentioned this to my girls. Then I asked them--do you know what a honeymoon is? Ashley immediately pipes up: "Yep, that is where the married people are going in their carriage." Ahh, the fairytales--I'm just glad that we have managed to live happily ever after.