I got Blog Bling!!! Yay!

Veronica (mother of adorable Amy) gave me flowers! What a great start to the last day of the year.

My husband is fixing the floor, and set off all the smoke detectors. Slightly iffier -- fixed up floor! YAY! Endless beeping and attendant howling by dogs, not so YAY. But...fixed up floor, all windows wide open, fresh air pouring in on all sides...hmmm...just a more convoluted but ultimately good start to the last day of the year.

Thanks, Veronica!!!

weekly winners

Weekly Winners, Thanks, Lotus!!!



Christmas at our house...

I couldn't wrap up the Guitar Hero III box and put it under the tree, because the boys would recognize the shape and know what it was...so they got a photo of it instead. Thor got it right away (he suggested it was a ransom photo!), and Zach was confused. The kids were really excited about Rock Band and GHIII. We have played Rock Band for hours -- it is crazy fun!

The dogs got several big bones each for Christmas...

Mojo as usual right in the middle of everything...

....

weekly winners

Reel of Christmas lights.

Bubble ornament.

Santa Banana and Spiderman. We have strange ornaments.

The tree, and a blurry Tess.

The Christmas tree. From underneath it.

Thor.

Mojo and my arm. I suddenly feel the need to sweep.

Abe decides he wants to wrestle. Under the tree. Swell.

Mojo's eye. This strange photo is the result of trying to take a pic of Mojo peeking at me while I was laying under the tree.

Zachary with the tree.

I was trying to take a picture of me and Mojo. Mojo decided he desperately needed to lick me. Mojo licking your neck feels remarkably like he is ripping out your jugular. He has a very strong tongue.

Tess behind the tree stringing lights.

Tess and the lights.

And the best picture and event all week -- Mark coming home after being deployed for a couple months in Kuwait, and Thor and the dogs greeting him!

ps...thanks to sarcastic mom lotus for weekly winners. there are lots of wonderful photos here!

All you other moms can just give up.

In fact no doubt at all I am the best gamer Mom EVER. EVER. Seriously.

Not only did I let Thor drag me to EB Games at midnight to get HALO3, so he could have it the second it was released...I bought TWO, not one, but TWO of the legendary version...one for each boy with the damn MasterChief helmets...Which by the way are now proudly displayed on either side of the TV. On the half bookcases full of DVD's. The bookcases I had just reorganized and gotten the stuff off the top, gotten all the DVD's back into the right cases and the loose ones put away -- why is it so freaking hard for the children to understand the concept of putting the damn DVD back in the right case? But I digress. So I had a music box and a couple of pretty stained glass candleholders on top of said bookcases. It looked grown-up and nice for 47 seconds. But now, I have MasterChief staring at me in stereo every time I sit down to watch TV in the family room. And the most funnest part of HALO3 is not the MasterChief ogling me, but rather the replay feature. So the rat children can save and replay every second of a 27 minute long game for me. With rewindability. Which they use. A lot. Let me just say "woot."

Next, I found ROCK BAND!!!1!!!!1!!!11! for the 360. A feat equal to scaling Mount Everest. And just as expensive. (Okay, so a feat equal to scaling Mount Rainier, and more expensive than a good pair of hiking boots.) I didn't even know how AWESOME ROCK BAND!!!!!!!1!1!!!!1!! is, but apparently it is better than sex, chocolate cake, Robert Redford and school holidays. (That is not a direct quote from the kidlets, who probably don't even know who Robert Redford is, and if they do, it is as a geezer. ) The boys are thrilled Tess is getting ROCK BAND !!!!!!111!!!!!! for Christmas...

What they are completely unaware of is this. Yesterday, just to complete my title as Best Gamer Mom EVAH, I found GUITAR HERO III. The game my children think is completely sold out. Everywhere. The game they have been talking about for a couple of months. (I don't understand why they didn't make me pre-order it. I mean, we pre-ordered HALO3 more than a YEAR before it was released. Before they even announced a release date. We pre-ordered this bizarre Japanese game* -- a game so obscure Thor was the only person to pre-order it. A game so obscure Thor may have been the only one to buy it. But GUITAR HERO III? We couldn't pre-order a game that is a ton of fun and going to be hugely popular and sold out. That would make sense....) The game that is sold out in every store in Tucson, except the exchange on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Where we happened to be yesterday. And got it. And didn't pay any sales tax on it either. Triple Woot!

And, bonus for me, besides being the Best Gamer Mom EVAH, I actually like playing video games, and I really liked playing GUITAR HERO (Zeke's friend brought it over one day...).















*The obscure Japanese game...Chulip. A game so Japanese, so bizarre, I cannot explain it, other than to tell you that you must run around looking for things and kissing people. Yes, the main character kisses people. People whom he follows around waiting for them to be not pissed off. Because they will kill him if he kisses them when they are annoyed. He can also die if he pulls poop out a garbage can. (You have to dig through the trash looking for things to sell. But poop has deadly qualities, it seems. I told you, it is very strange and bizarre.)


Hey. I am such a Super Gamer Mom I actually take the time to find out about (or I actually listen part of the time when Thor tells me) about their endless video games. I am the Best Gamer Mom EVAH...

Mojo's under the Christmas tree....

I ended up with this very weird shot of Mojo's eye yesterday. Tess and I had finished putting lights on the tree, and were laying under it looking up. Mojo and Abe tried to join us under the tree, and I was trying to take a picture of them peeking at me. What I ended up with is this very strange shot of Mojo's eye.

Somehow they did not manage to knock over the tree, even though they ended up trying to play under the tree...

Weekly Winners.

(The wonderful Lotus started this...Woots to Lotus!)


Crafts yesterday at church.
Frost on the car. In Tucson.

Snow in the Catalinas above 6500 feet. Fog in Tucson.

Very foggy in town.

Zach found his book about himself in second grade...look closely -- that is a drawing of a TV falling on his brother's head. Yeah, that really happened.

My Mona Lisa, or Tess as a crank.

I love the big sky and clouds.

Snow on the Rincon Mountains.

I know I took these photos a couple weeks ago, but this week I did some cropping and special effects on them, so they are new photos of AMARC -- the facility in Tucson where they mothball or disassemble planes. There are thousands of planes sitting in the desert.

Zeke's Second Grade Writing...

Zeke found a book he wrote and illustrated when he was in second grade. In it, he immortalizes the incident in which a portable tv fell on Thor's head. I don't remember this at all, but that year Mark was in Egypt and I was a geographical single mom of a 7 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old. Plus there was that concussion that year. Not exactly surprising I don't remember everything. He also wrote about things he loves -- I find it interesting that he loves fish, but drew fish with enormous fangs, looking like it's chasing him while he is swimming. And the "poisen amphibians"...I have no idea where that came from. But he "just hates them..."