Today was the local Christmas Parade, the local animal shelter has been entering every parade to help make others aware of the shelter and to help dogs get adopted and as a way for good PR in the community. You'd be suprirsed how many people are not aware that our town even HAS a shelter, and the ones that do know we have one, have no clue WHERE it is most of the time.
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| I was trying to get photos of everyone getting ready for the parade. Kams kept walking in front of me so I just told her to stand still so I could take her picture then she kept trying to talk, so finally I told her to just stand there and smile. So she was mid sentence and smiled and gave me this akward smile. She had fun riding on the float with the other kids and waving to all of the people watching the parade. She picked out her own Christmas out fit and I said ok works for me, whatever keeps you happy during the parade I'm all for it. I don't think she did too bad of a job. |
So since I've been volunteering at the shelter since March of this year, and I am there every Friday and I photograph the dogs and manage the social media for our shelter, I have a blast going to the parades. One of the shelter volunteers does an amazing job organizing all of the plans so the shelter can be in the parade. It's great to be able to get out into the community and make others aware of something in the community. Our shelter definetley needs the help of the community. It's a gassing facility and that's something we would love to see changed. The volunteers all work very hard to get the dogs adopted and out of the shelter so no dogs have to die. My daughter loves volunteering at the shelter, she's been going for quite awhile and it is something that she really enjoys. For her 5th birthday she collected donations to take to the shelter rather than getting toys for her birthday, I was so proud of her! She also loves to foster some of the smaller dogs from time to time until they can find homes. She's that child who is always bringing home animals asking if she can keep them. Much to her father's woe as he is NOT much of an animal person at all. He's in the wrong family I think! He's stuck in a family that has 2 dogs, 2 cats, a hamster and a beta fish and we hope to add a hermit crab to the family in a few months. I guess he'll be moving out and into the dog house in the back yard?
Though after tonight I think the DOG HOUSE would be a perfect place for him! He's gotten himself in pretty deep with me tonight. He kind of brushed off his moms emergency surgery because he had "better" things to do than worry about his mom and her surgery. That's just not cool. Won't go into details, but let me just say I am VERY disappointed in him. I will say that my Mother in law is in the hospital tonight awaiting her emergency gall bladder surgery, my sister in law is at the hospital with her tonight and they are trying to decide if they will do the surgery tonight or in the morning. Praying that the surgery goes well for her.
We sat up our little Elf last night, the elf wasn't even up 24 hours before my daughter goes over and is staring at him, then she reaches out and before I can stop her...she pokes him. She then says "Haha I poked you, you are still here!" So now she thinks I'm lying because I said he'd lose his magic if she touched him. *sigh* So for a couple of days he is just going to sit on the shelf and not do anything. Because she touched him.
Last night instead of going to bed Keegan decided he wanted to play with the Christmas tree, so I snapped a few quick and in my opinion, adorable photos of him playing with the ornaments on the tree. He was really in to have his photo taken yesterday. Every time I turned around it was "Mom, Mom, MOM! Look at me, take my picture!" So I did. Because for one, he was talking REALLY good which is a great improvement, and two, he isn't generally a fan of having his picture taken so anytime I can get in some photos of a smiley happy Keegan I'm all for it!
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| He was being such a little ham last night! |
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| This one is my absolute favorite! Looks like it should be on a Christmas card. |
Although I did think about telling my kids that Santa wasn't coming this year because the world was supposed to end before Christmas so he didn't bother making any toys as he wouldn't get to deliver them. But I didn't want to scare the kids and figured it didn't really sound as funny out loud as it originally had in my head. Somethings, better left not spoken out loud, but it's ok to blog them though! HA!
I hope everyone is ready for Christmas! I am almost ready just have a few more last minute things to do before Christmas gets here. Then I get to do the oh so fun task of wrapping everything. Not something I look forward to doing. I am no fan of wrapping presents. I'd rather just shove it under the tree and call it good. I certainly do NOT go out of my way to wrap presents like they just stepped out of a Better Homes magazine, none of that fancy frilly fluff for my presents! My Mother used to do a lot of that stuff on presents, and I won't. I mean, yeh I'll wrestle it into wrapping paper and I MIGHT smack a pre bought bow on there but otherwise? That's it. I don't even use name tags! I just write the name on the package with a black marker. The kids are just going to shred the paper anyway in like 5 seconds. Do you REALLY think they are going to sit there for 5 minutes admiring the handiwork that you did on their present? How you did all of these little extra things and made it all pretty and coordinated ribbons on the package and yadda yadda? No. They could care less. They want as little on the present as possible so it's easier to get it open and get out their present when it's READY SET GO time! The one thing I DO make sure to do every year is Santa's presents come wrapped in special wrapping paper that is not like the other presents from Mom and Dad and from Grandma and other family. Santa's paper is unique! This year it's just a bright green with little red Santa's all over it.
I bought ornaments for my kids this year, but I'm not really happy with them, I think they are lame, and I honestly liked the ones I bought for my nephews and niece better, so will probably just hang on to the lame ornaments and look for some better ones later. To make decorating the tree even easier next year, I'm going to make a little box for each of the kids to put THEIR ornaments in and then store them with my ornaments and then next year while they are at school we'll put the tree up and I'll hang all of my ornaments up and then when they get home they can hang up their ornaments. Won't take as long and maybe they won't fight so bad (maybe?). I got all sentimental and teary eyed when they were decorating the tree a couple of days ago....that was short lived once they started trying to kill each other over her who was hanging up the next ornament. Amazing how quickly they can kill that sentimental misty eyed feeling!
Right now it is time for me to get to bed! I know my kids will be up early in the morning as they apparently do not understand the meaning of sleeping in on the weekends. They better wait until they are teenagers. I'm going to go into their rooms at 5am and start jumping on their bed and pestering them, and whining that I'm hungry, or I need to pee, or I want to watch a cartoon and see how they like it. Hahahaha.
Here lately Marshall has been getting up and immediately getting into everything, and he gets up around 5-6am in the morning and raids the house. I have to sleep VERY VERY lightly and listen for even ONE little foot step. He snuck up one morning and had somehow managed to find a permaneant marker and drew on my desk and had played with my camera and my kindle. All of which had been put up in areas he wasn't SUPPOSED to be able to reach. He moves like a stealthy little ninja so you REALLY have to strain your ears to even remotely hear him make a noise. Going to purchase one of those door alarms to go on their bedroom, that way myself and everyone else in the neighborhood will know when he is trying to leave his bedroom. We had to do that with Kams for awhile when she was 2 because she would do the same thing and I was terrified she'd try and get out of the house in the middle of the night, regardless of how many locks were on the door! (She is no dummy she figured locks out at an early age and always kept me worried that she'd sneak out the door!) She managed to get outside ONCE and that was while I was doing laundry only a few steps away and I honestly did not hear ONE single out of the ordinary noise, then it got SILENT and I fled to the living room (that was only a few steps away) and Kams was at the swing set right outside the front door, Marshall was between the house and the swing set, and Keegan was on the front porch about to teeter off the steps and I quickly grabbed him and stuck him back in the house. Kams saw me and immediately ran inside saying 'Sorry Mommy!' and Marshall tried to RUN from me and I had to chase him down :( Caught him right before he got in the neighbors yard! So then we added extra locks to the door. They never got out again. You just hear too many stories of kids getting outside and being found blocks away in dangerous conditions because they snuck out the door. That's scary stuff! I did NOT want that to be my kids. Kids are sneaky and so very smart. You can literally have your eyes glued to them and they STILL manage to do something you don't want them to do. There for the longest time I made them follow me from room to room all day because I couldn't trust them not to try and climb up something or destroy something, so they always had to stay with me so I could keep very close tabs on them. Now that they are older, I'm actually tempted to start doing that with the boys again because they have gotten RIDICULOUS lately with how bad they do NOT want to listen to me. Hoping this stage doesn't last long! I miss my good little boys that listened pretty good!
I hear my pillow calling me! Good night!
Mae
