Triple Joy Beauty Parlour Now Open!

This holiday season, make sure you're looking your sparkly best at all the Christmas parties! Don't get your makeover by just anyone! Let our dedicated staff of three bring out the beauty in you! Services include manicures, make up application and hairstyling! Prices are very reasonable but we do recommend a reservation as appointments are limited. These girls are busy and very popular. In fact, the one in the yellow dress is so busy working on her own look that she can rarely fit a client in!

Grammie stayed for supper one night while she was in doing some Christmas shopping and as soon as the girls finished eating, th y scurried off and got themselves all glammed up. We didn't really know what was going on until Honey started to cry when Grammie was getting ready to leave. We didn't realize they'd been setting up their salon and were now ready for their first customer. Grammie quickly agreed to her surprise makeover appointment. She managed not to grit her teeth tooooo much during the heavy handed nail filing and let them style her hair to their liking. Murray opted out of his appointment which allowed me to get in even sooner than I'd hoped!

 

Project Candy, Complete!

Honey had a presentation to do and the topic was Christmas traditions. Honey chose to speak on how we make candy together! Her first choice was the candle light service at church on Christmas Eve but since her sisters were going to talk about that with their classes, she wanted to do something different.

In order to properly prepare for the presentation, we needed to do some research of course! They were allowed to bring in a prop for their story so I suggested that she make a batch to take and share with her class. She printed out the recipe on a card to give to her teacher and we made enough photocopies to give out to her classmates.

Last night after supper she got out the stool and set to work at the stove. I helped her measure some of the ingredients and she added everything in and did almost all the stirring and closely monitored the candy thermometer. Every once in awhile she needed a break when her arm got too tired or hot.

We didn't include the pecans since it was going to school and I had to use different chocolate to avoid problems with nut allergies. Other than that, her candy turned out just like it usually does!

Her presentation went well and one of the students told her that it was the best one that day! (and other people had edible samples too!) She was pleased that it went so well and many students said they were going home to make their own that night :)))

Party in the House!!!

Bringing the Christmas tree home last night pushed the kids right over the edge into full blown holiday insanity! They've been spazzy and goofy all day. I went to the gym and when I came in, the first thing Murray said to me was "uhhh they're a little excited." Master of the understatement that guy!

They've all got ants in their pants and just cannot sit or stand still for more than a nanosecond! Emotional volatility is at an all time high and it's like walking through an emotional minefield. I had stuff to prepare in order for the tree trimming party to begin so it was a long afternoon for them! While I was gone this morning they'd dragged out baby blankets, pillows & blankets and lots of lovely accessories around the house. They cleaned that up, but it took a good long while and interrupted my own clean up 47 times to ask when we could start. I would ask "well did you clean up the living room yet? No? well get back to work then!" They'd drift off and immediately lose focus and turn into bouncy giggly balls of ridiculous within 5 seconds. Then there were several urgent matters that they had to show me. Finally I started giving them lots of little jobs to keep them busy and that seemed to work well. Plus, since they wanted to get to the decorating, they were keen to help me with whatever I wanted. They changed their beds and Sweetie completely did hers alone. I walked by her room and everything was pulled up snug, sheets & quilts tucked tight under the corners. Upon closer inspection I did notice that not a single piece matched but she was so proud of her efforts that I just told her what an awesome job she'd done! The other two couldn't get their fitted sheets on straight and were like timebombs in there trying to get them fixed so I had to step in before they blew up! LOL

They helped me get all the food ready for our buffet, carrying and fetching everything I needed. Lovey took care of dumping the compost and of course fixed her hair for the party! Honey was keen for any job that needed doing and she & Sweetie set up the table for me.

Finally everything was ready and we got to eat! Apparently this was what they had really been waiting for because I didn't see anyone pick up a single ornament for a good long while after the buffet opened!

After some massive binging (and hopefully no purging later!), I cut them off and we got the ornaments on the tree! They were all fairly cooperative and helped each other find their ornaments and places for them. I laughed when they discussed how they were not putting Dora on the tree this year. I reminded Honey that it wasn't that long ago that she had a full scale melt down when her glass Dora ornament got broken. She doesn't even remember that!

 Murray finds a way to cope with the holiday frenzy. He may be turning into the boozer Aunt Wanda accused him of being several years ago!

Crazy for Christmas!!!

Wow. somebody, or rather, THREE somebodies are just a tad excited about some big holiday that's apparently on the horizon???

 

I didn't have advent calendars on Dec 1 so they made their own version. Actually Sweetie got it all drawn out and set up and they take turns colouring in the presents, one for each day of December. They haven't forgotten a day yet and not one fight about it either (with only 9 days to go surely something is going to crack though right???)

We finished supper early tonight and headed out to look at a lighting display we'd heard about. It was quite a show and the kids were good and wound up anyway so why not take that on the road in a small confined space after letting them catch up on 16 days worth of chocolate advent calendars??? (yep, not my wisest parenting moment..) They loved the show, especially when we opened the sun roof and let them watch from there. Don't worry Rick, we were driving at a very low speed on a back road in a trailer park and everyone was perfectly safe!

We did some decorating last week for their party and tonight we picked up a Christmas tree and got that set up in the stand. Tomorrow night is our tree trimming and appetizer and snack extravaganza. They'll be wild when they get up tomorrow, wanting to get right at that!

It's been a pretty productive week! I got all the editing done for my last client of 2012 and had her proofing session on Tuesday. So with that done, I was able to delve into the Christmas preparations!

I got some more shopping done, baked brown sugar shortbread, a batch of festive cookies, one batch of Toffee Butter Crunch, a pan of brown sugar fudge and some Mars Bar Delight (this one for Murray since he's not crazy about the other stuff!).

I got our Christmas card photos printed and started mailing out the farthest ones. If you're overseas or a great distance away, your card is in the mail!

Teena and I had our annual Christmas luncheon (with a coupon, woot woot!) and enjoyed a nice sit down meal with other people waiting on us!

We also went to the Christmas concert at school. Most of the mess from last week's water is cleaned up, the girls & I washed off all the foam tiles aka "flooring" today and they put that back together. I packaged up the goodie boxes for their teachers from all the baking and unloaded almost all that and we delivered those to the teachers today.

And I only missed 2 classes at the gym this week! Although with all that baking under my nose it was not a good week to be doing any skipping! Surely I'm making progress on this Christmas business???? Time will tell!!!

Show Time!

 We went to see the school Christmas concerts and they were sooooo good! Their music teacher does an amazing job with all the groups. The songs are all cute & funny, the costumes are always simple but tie in well with their pieces. I think it says a lot about her that when the Boys Choir came out to sing, there were 30-40 of them in the group! I watched the first few file out onto the risers, then another row and they just kept coming and coming out of the wings. Their number was also fantastic but of course I think the grade 2's were the best show in town!!!

Honey & Sweetie were in the same group and they sang Reindeer Rap which was super cute and they were doing some funky moves up there. They lyrics were pretty fast but I'd heard them plenty in the last few weeks so I could make out the words.

Sweetie's in the middle row just below the big blank space. Honey's in the same row, to the far right below the last reindeer on top. She was lifting her sunglasses trying to peek out at the crowd to find us I think!

Lovey's class & some other grade 2's did "I wanted a dog" and she was so excited and could barely contain herself from telling us the funny ending (the kid takes his baby sister to the exchange window & trades her in for a puppy LOL).

Honey was nervous this morning when she was leaving for school but she had the best moves on stage as far as I could tell and was really into it. Sweetie was concentrating so hard on getting her words out that she forgot she was supposed to be busting a move up there!

As they exited the stage, they were madly scanning the crowd, trying to make sure we'd all shown up! We were too far back though and they couldn't find us. After it was over, we walked over to the school and visited them in their classrooms and told them we'd loved the show. As we were leaving we overheard another kid say "wow! your mom and your dad AND your grandmother came to see you!!??!? lucky!!!" Yep, it's official, we're freaking awesome!!! :)))

Christmas Dance Show!

We went to the girls dance show this weekend! They've been practicing week after week, getting their choreography down. Their costumes were fairly simple but still things we didn't really own! I borrowed one black skirt, found 1 shirt in a bag of clothes someone had given us, got one skirt & shirt at the used shop and had to break down and buy one new shirt at the store yesterday when nothing turned up anywhere else! (don't worry, I didn't pay full price, 30% off sale, chah-ching!)

The girls were quite excited to get ready although we had to push them out the door without dessert to make it there on time. (there goes parents-of-the-year again). They rushed to get their shoes on and were very excited when Lovey's friend TT loaned them each a pair of "bubble socks" to use in the show. She even brought over her sock glue and helped them ensure the socks would stay up during all the jumping and dancing around. She must have done a very good job because those socks didn't budge an inch and we'll be peeling off the glue residue all week! :)))

They did a great job in their show and loved watching the older girls do their numbers. The hard shoe dances were by far the favourites of the day. On the way home I asked if any of them would want to do hard shoe someday. Immediately Honey piped up with "who WOULDN'T want to do hard shoe Mum??!?!??!?" Silly me!

Not Again!!??!?!

More water in the basement this week! I came home from the gym, grabbed some lunch and was headed to check my email when I slipped a bit on something wet. Fearing that Murphy had regurgitated some mess on the floor, I was hesitant to look down. There wasn't as much joy as one might expect upon realizing I hadn't actually stepped in a pile of barf. Instead, it was a couple inches of water on the floor, EVERYWHERE!!!

I phoned Murray, dreading the clean up. He came home in a flash and what had seemed so daunting before, he cleaned up in a little over an hour. Once he manned the shopvac, it didn't seem so intimidating anymore. I started pulling up our foam tile floor and putting furniture on blocks so we could get at everything.

Although it was a nuisance, it in no way compares to the mess we faced last time and I was able to appreciate many bright sides!

-it happened during the day & we didn't have to stay up all night bailing
-we were better prepared with our own powerful shopvac
-we still hadn't replaced our flooring
-the walls didn't have to be dismantled
-nothing was really ruined or had to be discarded
-we didn't need to call in an army to help us tear up a subfloor
-we fixed everything with a shopvac and sweltering  heat

However, we can no longer live in denial, believing that this isn't going to be an ongoing problem. Time to pull our heads out of the sand and figure out a plan of attack! ....after hristmas..... probably...