Awwwwww

And 7 milliseconds later he was crying his little eyes out.  I have mixed feelings about the whole Santa/lap thing.  On one hand, the pictures are really really cute. On the other, the nearly inevitable result is a crying child.  Plus, my family was never really big on the Santa thing.  I don't ever remember feeling a need to ask Santa for presents.  

Last year, our local Chik-Fil-A had Santa for an evening and Tucker could kind of get used to him.  The pictures turned out super cute.  Since it went well last year, I thought I'd give it a try.  The picture did turn out cute, but T cried within 5 seconds of lap landing.  Why subject your kids to such a tramatic experience?  I don't think we'll be participating next year.

Can You Help Me Out?

We got a darling ornament in the mail today.  It's a little reindeer family with our names and "Thomas Family" at the bottom.  I have no idea who sent it.  Do you know? I'd love to say thanks.

Also, I've been looking (to no avail) for a toddler-sized Santa hat.  I found tons of infant and adult hats, but no smallish type person hats.  This is a dire photo opportunity matter.  If you know where I can find one, please let me know! I'd be happy to reimburse anyone who picks one up for me too.

Reveling in my done-ness

I'm now officially finished with my A&P class.  I rented a stupid movie for tonight and am planning on reading nothing but novels and magazines until January 20.  It felt good to escape this class with a good grade and a feeling like maybe I can do the math and science this degree requires. Rejoice!

Shweaty, shweaty balls

Since the majority of my random internet hits continue to come from this SNL Shweaty Balls skit, I thought I ought to at least have the video here.  Season's Greetings everyone!

Cue The Banjo

Last night Ry and I attended a Christmas party one of his co-workers was hosting.  He lives close to work, so it should be about a 45 minute drive from our house to his.  We left the house at 10 minutes to 7 pm.  The first 20 minutes of our drive were without incident.  Then we got detoured.  No problem. We took the detour and a few miles down the road were able to get back to our original route.  Except the road was still blocked.  Because every power line for miles was down.  

Between our house and our host's house are a handful of country roads and the area that NJ residents lovingingly call "The Pineys".  Lucky for us, Ry had a map application on his cell phone, so we fired it up and found the only option that would get us to our party without backtracking all the way to our house.  Reed Road was the thinnest of gray lines on the map, but we foraged onward.  The asphalt quickly turned to gravel, which gave way to dirt.  

We were in Ry's car, not the truck.  He turned to me and said "What do you think?"  "Just go slow," I responded.  And slow we went.  We went about 10 mph through the most uninhabited part of NJ I have ever seen.  I briefly thought we were toast when half the "road" was washed out from our recent rains.  We finally reemerged on a paved road and made it to our destination in an hour and 20 minutes.

For anyone who thinks NJ is just a big suburb, I dare you to accompany us to Reed Road.  Garden it may not be, but it's surely not the Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State either.

Gotta Watch Them

Penguins are sneaky.  T pretty much gave him this look for the next 3 minutes as he slowly backed away from the penguin.  Six-foot-tall gingerbread man, snowman, and reindeer = OK. Six-foot-tall penguin = em ... no.

Update: I just realized if you click on the picture you can see creepy penguin dude's eye looking out the mask. 

The course evaluation that wasn't

Last night was the last official day of my A&P class.  I have a final next Monday and then I'm done until January.  As is customary, we had course evaluations to complete.  My experience with course evals (both as a student and instructor) is that there are questions standard to the entire college and a few that the course director throws  in.  

This was a horse of a different color.  The eval was obviously course-specific, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing (although it makes it difficult to compare instructors across disciplines, but I digress).  Nope, this evaluation asked questions like "Did you read the textbook?", "What advice do you have for incoming students?", and "What was your favorite lab?".  These were the hard-hitting questions.  There was not a single question about the instructor. Not one.  This is the survey equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and singing "LA LA  LA."  The last question was something about any "other" comments you might have about the course.  I had a few.

Tantrum T

Another milestone reached

For the first time today, they weighed T on the big kid scale instead of the baby table-top version. Sniffle.

This is the buckethead game

T loves to walk around the house with this duplo bucket on his head. Until recently, that was the extent of the game.  Then he decided that having his head inside the bucket was not good enough.  Oh no.  Daddy and Mommy have to share the bucket.  I don't know what makes it so fun, but I enjoy asking for a kiss during shared bucket head time.  He turns around and grabs your face, and pushes it against the side of the bucket to get the right kiss angle.  Ry tells me it is a near physical impossibility when he's in the bucket.

This is what happens

This is what happens when you leave your husband unattended at the Home Depot. He comes home with 6 tiny LED flashlights.  Why?  They were only $10! And they came with backup batteries!  Of course, we later discovered that they are disposable flashlights.  The batteries are installed in such a way that when they're dead you can't replace them.  I guess you get what you pay for.

EDIT: Apparently, you can indeed change the batteries.  And, they came with 18 FREE BATTERIES! And they are the most awesomest cheap flashlights ever. And T loves them. (Ok, honey?)

The Thanksgiving Injury

On Thanksgiving morning, I was busy making a few dishes for the Thanksgiving dinner we attended.  Ry got in the shower and T joined him in the bathroom because, well, mostly because T wants to be wherever Ry is.  Anyhow, I heard a crash and a cry.  I went into the bathroom to discover that T had fallen off of the little stool he uses to wash his hands and bit his tongue on the way down.  Sucker bled for a good 15 - 20 minutes.  Since he was up for his bath next, we did the logical thing and popped him in the tub with a popsicle.  The water was orange by the end, but he tasted good.

A Dangerous Discovery

I've been a bad blogger lately.  I know it.  I've been busy with the end of the school year, Christmas shopping/card creating. I've also been uninspired to write lately.  I have lots of stored up posts, and I'll try to catch up this weekend.

Anyhow, I recently made a rather dangerous discovery.  My dear husband asked me to make chocolate chip cookie bars for a party we attended recently.  They were super easy.   You basically make the cookie batter and pour it into a cake pan.  This cuts total prep time from over an hour to about 15 minutes.  Why is this dangerous you ask?  I rarely have an hour to invest in making chocolate chip cookies.  15 minutes?  15 minutes I have like crazy.  

Another (completely unrelated) thing I learned this week is that the great majority of the random web hits on my blog come from this post about SNL's shweaty balls skit.  What does this say about me? About society?