Let the Celebrations Begin!

9:00 pm- Tah dah! I parked myself in front of the computer after dinner, and finished AJ's book! Suffered my own camping flashbacks while reading it, ha ha...As I said, I'll have to reread it all the way through after the holidays:) And I liked the ending, and can hardly wait to read the next one!

Still currently reading: The Goddess and the Ghost. Have reached Ch 7:) At this rate, I'll be finished by next week...every time I sit down to read it, either my kids interrupt me, or hubby gripes about the computer usage...he and W are down for a nap, and that's all I heard while posting this am..."When are you getting off that damn computer?"

Why am I not reading? I've got cookies due to come out of the oven at any given...yup, there went the timer. Bye!

Drum roll...cymbal clash, please! My oldest is kicking off the holiday season with his 16th birthday tomorrow:)

Which means Mom's job today is to get everything ready.

Laundry: I've neglected it for the past 3 days, since I've been at a funeral and have baked cookies the last two. So today, I need to get it all sorted and washed.

Baking: We have finicky cake eaters in our house. K likes white cake, and has also requested a Dairy Queen cake. S likes the homemade ones, either white or chocolate. I happen to love chocolate, red velvet, and yellow, and love the store-bought cakes. Hubby and W don't have a preference, although W is in the I-only-like-the-frosting stage of his young life! So today, I'm making K a white homemade cake; tonight, I'm picking up his store cake with the Teen Driver decorations (white cake with whipped cream icing); tomorrow, there will be a DQ cake.

Food: We are meeting one of his friends from Martinsville in Spencer tonight and bringing him down here for the weekend. And I'm letting my daughter have friend over as well. The teenagers have requested pizza tonight, from K's favorite local pizza parlor. Tomorrow, its off to Terre Haute to play laser tag, and then meeting Grandma and Grandpa at the Longhorn Steakhouse for presents and a birthday meal:)

His main gift is coming in a month: He'll get his driver's license in January. No car, but he'll be able to drive himself to Boy Scouts on Mondays. I have to wrap his other gifts today...there's a chance he'll see this, so I won't tell you what we got him...and hide them until tomorrow morning. It's our custom to have them on the table when he wakes up in the morning.

Next week, his scout troop is scheduled to go to Wright-Patterson AFB; I don't know if he'll be able to go; depends on the weather and whatever holiday celebrations are going on next weekend. My birthday falls in the middle of the week, so don't know if my parents will include mine in the festivities tomorrow, or if it will be the traditional family Christmas/Molly's b-day party which usually happens anytime during the week before or a couple days after Christmas. Just depends on when everyone can get together!

In the meantime, hubby came home yesterday due to the snow up north, and won't return until Monday. Which is actually a good thing; we were hoping he wouldn't have to work on K's birthday! So last night for dinner, I made homemade beef stroganoff, and I didn't have to go out into the cold to take the kids to school this morning:)

Still no snow down here; just rain.

If I get to it today, I'm making butterscotch chip cookies. The kids are consuming the M&M cookies at an alarming rate...thank God I made 11 dozen! And have more chocolate chips and M&Ms in the freezer, so can make more if necessary! But first, it's the butterscotch and hubby's favorite, oatmeal raisen. Anyone else have a request? We'll have a baking party:)