this past week on the island

i think i have fully recovered from the black friday shopping event. i lost my voice over thanksgiving weekend but it came back by tuesday.

we had a good thanksgiving. we went to my mom's house on thanksgiving day and spent the day with family. always fun. i got to see my new niece, a, and she's as cute and bright eyed as they come. she was never fussy and had smiles for everyone. she did great especially for being around a bunch of people she didn't know.

of course you know what all i did the next day. after shopping all night on thursday, we went to my in-laws house on friday. we stayed the entire weekend there. it was a fun, relaxing time. i think i slept a lot though. my husband was great and let me sleep in. actually my mother-in-law helped out a lot in the morning too! thanks to both of you!!!

the officer spent a lot of the weekend making a mini-dirtbike track for the kids. he had to plow the ground, move the dirt, and make the track. he made speed bumps, a little jump and burms (built up dirt around curves). my son was the only one that rode around it and he thought it was great!

even though my son was the only one that rode on the track he wasn't the only one that did something new that weekend. my daughter learned to ride the dirtbike with no training wheels.

yep that's her riding the dirtbike looking behind herself. i think she had just run over a green castle the officer had set up for her to drive around. the first lesson she has had to learn is how to stop when the officer says to stop. last time she tried to ride the dirtbike without training wheels she ran into a tree. she got the stopping down great and enjoyed riding around in the big yard.

this week was spent getting back into the routine of things. it's been nice. today the officer took off work. we decided we would spend the day together doing christmas-y things. this morning we went shopping for some christmas presents. we didn't find a lot but we did have fun together shopping and eating lunch. this afternoon, the officer cleaned the kid's dirtbike and changed the oil in it. while he did that, i put up the christmas tree and put the lights on it. have i told you that the last couple of years we've been very lazy about when we put up our tree? one year we only put up the top 1/3 of the tree and put little ornament on it. that's pretty bad.

this year i purposed that it would be different. i had the officer get the boxes down before he dealt with the dirtbike. the officer has always brought the christmas boxes in, put up the tree, put on the lights, and then he's exhausted. more often than not i end up putting on the last half of ornaments on while he takes a nap. this year i put up the tree and put the lights on hoping to postpone the yawns from the officer. he didn't take a nap while we put up the tree, but it didn't postpone the yawns either. i'll keep working on that.

we used to have a tree (before kids) that had all the same ornaments on it. you know the kind. the pretty ones. not that the tree we have isn't pretty, but you know what i mean. it had red balls, white lights, and red, green and gold ribbon swirled around it. i love those kinds of trees. however, the officer likes multicolored lights and an assortment of ornaments. before kids, we would switch off year to year. one year we had the "pretty tree" and the next year we had "the other tree". now if you have "the other tree" please don't leave crazy comments on this post. let me finish this post first.

i have come to love "the other tree" even though that's what i may still call it. ever since i heard the lines "as I was decorating my Christmas tree. Unwrapping funky ornaments made of Popsicle sticks... and missing my mother so much I almost couldn't breathe. I always miss my mother at Christmas." from you've got mail decorating the tree has been different for me. i still have my mother, but i guess i have come to appreciate the different ornaments on our tree. i have ornaments i made when the officer and i were just dating, ornaments the kids have made, ornaments from my son's first christmas, and ornaments the kids and i made three years ago. i have ornaments that have our pet's names on them. tate, jesse, and tree have all since died. so as we unwrapped each ornament it was neat to say and hear, "oh do you remember this.....?" as we hung them on the tree. the tree becomes a memory holder, a memory maker.

every year the kids trade off whose turn it is to put the star on top of the tree.

the tree becomes a memory holder, a memory maker. i went over to a friend's house this past week and saw her tree. she has four children so her tree had twice as many ornaments on it. i loved looking at her tree and as i asked one of her daughter's about the ornaments, she could tell me something about every one of them. memory holders.

we have two ornaments that move constantly around our tree. it's a boomer sooner schooner and a pistol pete. i used to have an ornament that had ou on one side and osu on the other. whoever won that year's bedlam battle got to have their side of the ornament facing outward. we can't hang that ornament on the tree anymore so we use the schooner and pistol pete. well as anyone knows, ou won the bedlam battle this year - 47-41. so the boomer sooner schooner goes right under the star. it's a constant battle against my son and the officer to make sure the schooner stays in it's rightful place. i can't help it if 2002 was the last time pistol pete got to be near the top of the tree. my son tried to put pistol pete at the top of the tree, as you can see in the picture below.

right before he went to bed my son said, "well let me take one last look at the tree." i had put the schooner on top! he noticed it right away. he's too short to move it though so we'll see what he does over the next couple of days.

soo... i have come to love "the other tree" and i don't think we will ever have "the pretty tree". even after my kids leave home i'm sure i'll want "the other tree" even more.

after we decorated the tree, the kids watched a little bit of a winnie the pooh christmas video to kill time until it was dark. around 5:30 p.m., we left to go look at christmas lights. fyi, just make hot chocolate at your house and take it with you because if you get it from mcd's it will cost you almost $10 for 4 hot chocolates!

we have a couple of parks that have christmas light displays. every year we try to get hot chocolate and then go look at christmas lights in town. pictures are fuzzy but you get the idea.

had to take a picture of the reindeer hopping over our car even though it's pretty fuzzy too. as we were driving under them, my children were laughing hysterically in the backseat because my son said the reindeer were "pooping" on us as they jumped over us. why do boys think anything regarding "poop" is funny? this has to be just a boy thing because i don't think girls automatically go there.

this last picture is horribly fuzzy too but i wanted to remember it. as were leaving the light display, they always have the cars stop in case you want to make a donation and then they give you peppermints. last year there were people dressed as a snowman and a reindeer. my kids did not want to have anything to do with them. this year my son wanted to hand the snowman the donation, but my daughter was in the floorboard so the snowman wouldn't see her. i guess they are kind of freaky big.

the last stop before we headed home was a house, two houses actually, that had a great christmas lights display. both houses did their lights together and have it set to music. when you pull up, you tune your radio to a certain station, listen to the music, and watch the light blink in sync with the music. it's pretty awesome!

that's our evening and week. it's been pretty good so far. so do you have "the pretty tree" or "the other tree"?