This year has been a real struggle to get my act together for Christmas.

I’m late getting my rum balls made.  I’m late getting my gifts wrapped.  I’m late getting my cards out.  The only thing I have NOT been late for, is putting extra holiday pounds on.  I’ve nailed that.  You could even say I’m early.

How many Xs can you put on a dress size before it’s obnoxious?

Never mind.  I don’t really want to think about it.

I’ve had a problem getting the lights up on the Big Blue Spruce that is out in front of the Little Cottage this year.  It’s always been a production, because of the height of the glorious evergreen that the previous owners of the Little Cottage kindly planted over a decade ago, but this year the height is proving to be too much for our little operation.  We have long poles, but not-long-enough poles.

You see the evergreen behind the moose? That’s the one we light. It’s the only thing outside that we light, and we tend to do it RIGHT.  Like, a kagillion lights go on that thing.  No joke.

This year I begged some neighbors who have bigger apparatus to help us.  One of our neighbors owns a sign company, and I asked him if he could use his cherry picker to help us reach the top.  But guess what….the guy has a LIFE, and I can’t get him to drop everything to service my tree!  I have a feeling if I could get him to squeeze us into his busy schedule, his wife might have a thing or two to say about getting their own lights up!

Then I did something REALLY stupid.  In a fit of holiday excitement, I bet the son of another neighbor, who owns one of the orchards near us, Lewis Orchards,  that we could light our tree with more lights than he would light the Lewis Orchards trees with.

We agreed that if I won at the end of Christmas, I would get to demand his help with getting our tree lit next year.  And if I lost, I have to make him extra rum balls this year.

You’d think that would be motivation enough for My Captain and I

to get the dang thing done.

But the weather has been cruddy, and my attitude has not been exactly elf-like, and so the beautiful Big Blue Spruce in front of the little cottage only has the bottom half strung with lights.  The lights only go up as far as the not-long-enough poles will reach. I’m telling you, it looks half-dressed.  That’s about par for the course with me this year…..

I’m considering just putting ALL of the lights on the bottom half.  Technically I could still win the bet, because we never said HOW I would ‘light it up!’ more than he did.  We were talking volume, not aesthetics.

Just picture a kagillion lights on just the bottom half of the tree. It might not be pretty, but it might just win me the help for next year.   What do you think?

Don’t judge.

Look how far we are getting on the Mud Pit/Patio/Walkout Basement project!!!  (And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘My Captain.’)

Isn’t this exciting!?

We’re almost ready for the siding!  After painstakingly prepping the underlayers, the final steps are upon us!  (And by ‘us’, I mean ‘him’).

What will we do with our free time when we complete the siding?!  (And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘he’.)

Critter points out that all of My Captain’s Sawhorses stare at us.  They’re happy, though.

I just love that My Captain has accomplished this task.  He’s worked for four years at it, from breaking ground to this.

It’s been squeezed in between living lives with kids and a demanding job, and an ADD wife.

He never stops.  He just keeps at it.  Chipping away at what needs doing.

He is the complete, and total bomb.  Look at him sporting the Police Recruitment T-Shirt so effortlessly.  If I wore that, people would think I was a fugitive.  He wears it like some kind of ding-dang poster boy for Heroes.

I just love him to death, my true-blue, hard working, noble, honest, rugged best friend.

Sorry.

Sorry again.

He’s made so much progress.  I’m always amazed how far he’s come.  I never seem to make as much progress as he does.  I always get stuck right about…..

here.

Don’t judge.

We’re in the middle of our Advent Chains this December, as we go chugging full speed towards Christmas Day, and My Captain just opened one that takes the cake.

Remember, every Thanksgiving we write 25 links of love or affirmation or encouragement for each one of us, and every morning in December, we each get to start the day with a little pat on the back by opening one of our advent links.

It’s so much fun, and everyone looks forward to it.

Doesn’t it get hard to think of new things after a while?  Well, heck yes!  We each have to actually dig DEEP to get new and creative every year.  It actually takes…..wait for it….EFFORT.

Do they complain sometimes when I make them sit down to write them up?

HELLO!?  Are we a normal family?  Is this a trick question?  I think it would be weirder if they didn’t whine about having to write them.   But do they love to open them?  You bet your sweet bonnet they do.

And why on earth are you wearing a bonnet in this day and age?  Weirdo.

Here is today’s link that had My Captain snickering:

A little background to it:  Stephen Amell is an actor who plays “The Arrow” on the CW channel, and frankly, he’s delicious. This is Stephen.

He’s perfection, obviously.  If you like raw strength combined with chiseled features, that is.

My Captain, who is perfection to ME in just about every way (except for that thing he does with cracking his ankle.  That drives me up the wall.  What a freak!) read that link and just chortled.  He guffawed.  He cackled.

Okay, he did none of these things.  He’s not a chortler or a cackler.  He did, chuckle, though.   He’s a quiet chuckler.  Kind of like any cowboy in any western you’ve ever seen.  It’s all deep and manly and quiet and confident.  His amusement is what I live for.

Where was I?

Right, advent chains.  Anyways, this one was hilarious. The kids love to mess with him.  We can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s says!

So this happened:

Before you panic, yes, the driver was fine.

It was raining really hard, you see, and she was late for her train, you see, and she doesn’t usually go down this road, you see.

I failed to see why that translated into destroying my tulip garden.

Or why the weeping cherry tree that my children and I planted nearly ten years ago had to die for it. Oh, I realize it just looks like mud and tire tracks to you, but not a week ago I had JUST finished every so painstakingly planting hundreds and hundreds of tulip bulbs.

Right there.

So guess what I had to do today?  That’s right, plant hundreds and hundreds of tulip bulbs.  Again.  Oh it’s worth it though, because in the spring, we get this:

And I love it so much, that every fall I spend a LOT of my free time planting for spring.

It’s worth it.

I do NOT, however, like to do it TWICE in one year.   But, grateful that that was all that had happened from this accident….SO glad our moose didn’t get run over, or that anyone was hurt, I decided to move on emotionally.

Mostly.

So there I was, working new tulip bulbs into the soil in my unapologetically purple Schmidt work overalls, on the cold but sunny December day that was today, while my handsome lug of a husband worked on his own project.

He’s been building a walk-out patio for the last…er…4 years or so.

He can only work on it when he’s not at work, or working overtime, or doing stuff with the Urban Search and Rescue Team.

Hence the 4 years.   It doesn’t help that he is somewhat of a perfectionist. Just a wee bit.

And by wee bit, I mean certifiable.

Anyways, so he was out there, working, and he had one of our Sonos speakers out on the patio with him, playing typical male construction-type music.  He was sawing and measuring and drilling to The Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac, and Jimmy Buffet.

He did his thing, and I did my thing.  But then I realized that I wasn’t hearing Stevie Nicks any longer.  I was hearing Bing Crosby belt out The Twelve Days of Christmas.  And I had been unconsciously singing along with it!  I turned and bellowed down to My Captain,

“Hey!  What happened to the music?!”

With a screw hanging out of one side of his mouth, he yelled back, “I knew you’d rather hear this instead.”

Me: “That’s ridiculous.  Put your own music back on.  You don’t want to listen to this.”

My Captain: “Yes I do. I do because I know you want to.”

Me: “Maybe I don’t.  Maybe I want to listen to what you usually listen to.”

At this point Bing had faded out, and Frank Sinatra was singing Silver Bells.  NOTE:  It’s hard to have an argument with Silver Bells drifting sweetly in the background.

My Captain: “No, you don’t.”

Me: “Yes, I do.”

I began lumbering down the muddy hill to where he was working, pissed that I had to make the extra effort.  I reached for his phone (it holds the channel changing App for the Sonos) and he swatted me away.

My Captain:  “No, you don’t.”

Me:  “Yes, I do.”

He turned his back to me and picked up his drill.  I fumed. I didn’t WANT him to have to change his music to my dorky Christmas Retro tunes.  I know full well that men who are building things HAVE to listen to rock.  It’s in the Man Code somewhere.

I waited a beat and then sweetly asked, “Hey, can I borrow your phone a second? I’d like to take some pictures for the blog.”

He turned his head and smirked at me.

Me:  “No, really.  Please?”

Reluctantly he handed me his phone, and I took the pictures that you see above.

And then I promptly turned the channel to the grinding, wailing, pulsating music of Triumph’s  Magic Power, and turned it UP baby!

Snickering, I put his phone down and tiredly hoofed it back over to the part of the yard I was working, picked up my shovel, and began moving dirt again….

….just in time to hear Nat King Cole croon, “Chestnuuuuttttts roasting on  an open fiiiiiiiire.”

My husband is such a butthead.

I guess it’s our somewhat lame version of The Gift of The Magi.

Don’t judge.

In typical airhead fashion, I failed to notice that Mamaboe.com crossed the threshold of 100,000 viewers!  I had intended to celebrate, go out to dinner, maybe buy some flowers when it rolled over, but I was distracted as usual.  I blame My Captain.  He’s distracting as hell.

And lo and behold, I’m already over the threshold.

Dang.  I never thought I would see that number!

You guys are seriously hard up for entertainment, ain’t ya?

(And I’m so grateful that you are! Thank you so much for visiting my ridiculous little blog!)

You guys rock!

Love,

Mama