Tis the Season....

Everyone slept last night - hurray!  I literally went to bed before Quinny did around 7:30 pm and slept the whole night.  Quinny and Gavin did too.  You should see how joyful our household is this morning.  Everyone is rested, happy and enjoying each other's company.  Who knew what a little sleep could do for a family?

Carrie and I took the day off and did some Christmas shopping yesterday.  There are multiple malls down here so we went our separate ways and ended up at different ones.  Just to give you an idea of the differences between the mall down here and the mall in Cedar Rapids I parked in the normal jammed mall lot next to a black Ferrari 458 spider.  As in this guy isn't concerned about door dings.  (I drive the same car I bought when I graduated college - black beauty-it's not a Ferrari).  On the way out I can see through the glass doors of the department store and I believe I see a Lamborghini parked outside.  Yup, there it was.  Also a convertible just parked right outside the front door.  If you care you can view it here.  It's the white convertible in the corner.  The point is I need to make more friends.  Oh and there are a lot less pick up trucks in the mall parking lot in comparison to Cedar Rapids.  And there is a Gap.  A Gap!

It's fun, actually fun shopping for your kids.  I used to just dread going to the mall.  I hated it.  I think for the past decade I've done 95% of all my shopping online, but now that I have a three-year old, a kid that loves opening up gifts, hangs with Jimmy the she-elf (more on that in a minute) and let's us know what he told Santa he wants for Christmas a few times a day makes this whole shopping, pushing people out of your way to get the last spider man toy while waiting in line for 45 minutes to pay for something that's ridiculously overpriced it may give the average human a coronary is fun.  Legitimate enjoyment!  We get to play with all the toys to try them out and we know how much he will love X when we stumble upon it.  This regular Scrooge might have turned the corner.  I might be a Rudolph this year.  I'm sure it helps it's 78 degrees outside and I'm trying to get to my car to blast the A/C to cool off instead of scraping the snow off.

Quinny definitely thinks Jimmy is a she.  I'm sure our little elf has no issues being a semi-transsexual at which point Carrie chimed in that they sell skirts and we could get him one.  Now, I'm just looking out for Jimmy but if I was an elf, one that can't talk to us mind you, hearing all this and only being able to talk to Santa at night I would be freaking out.  So, being the only adult male I'm just trying to do Jimmy right and vetoed the skirt idea.  Don't forget the golf clubs this year Jimmy when you talk to Santa tonight - wink, wink.

Here is a link to our family photographer's blog that took hosted a holiday party and tooks some pics of the boys.  Click this link to get there.

PS  I did get a permanent link posted in the upper left corner to Mindy and Cory's blog so you can come here to link to theirs if you wish.  They have a tough holiday season coming up so I know they will appreciate your well wishes.