A Christmas Story

Maddie's school holiday show. (Maddie is in the red dress with the white fur collar in the front on the right side.) Her class learned all about the different holiday celebrations and she was VERY sad that I didn't know how to celebrate Hanukkah so that she could get presents eight days in a row. I promised her that I will read a "Hanukkah for Dummies" type book and watch some YouTube videos to be better prepared for next year.

Carrying on the Tobler tradition of making gingerbread houses before Christmas.

Build-a-Bear is of the devil. These things are seriously, seriously overpriced. And for some reason Maddie insists that they need underwear even though they have pants, along with every other possible accessory, as well as a stroller so she doesn't have to carry them. And of course I don't want to carry them all over the mall, so I agree on the stroller, which sets a bad precedent for next time we go there. It's a viscous cycle.

At the beautiful and cold nativity in Las Vegas.

Aunt Juli has lovely (you have to use that word a lot around English folks) parents-in-law that came all the way from England to celebrate Christmas with us. Maxine taught Maddie how to make proper (another favorite English adjective) Yorkshire pudding. If you can't tell, Maddie adores them.

Josh's family has this horribly torturous tradition of making the kids wait to see what Santa brought and open presents until the grandparents arrive. We had to distract Maddie and then wait in the lobby until 8:00 when Grandma and Grandpa Harris showed up. (Just warning you guys that it will be moved up significantly earlier next year!)

Maddie's favorite presents this year:

1) The hat that Josh bought me that didn't fit even though he made the store employee go in the back and find an extra large. So Maddie got it by default, but she loves it all the same. (I have a large head. What do you want me to say?!)

2) A karaoke microphone. Maddie would rather die than dance in front of people, and she is so shy to talk to somebody, but strangely, she will sing in front of anybody. Weird. But I will encourage that as long as she doesn't want to be the next Hannah Montana.

3) Lots-o-huggin Bear from Toy Story 3. I thought this was a weird request that she had for Santa because he is the villain in the movie. But now I think she regrets it. She has been freakishly in love with this bear, carrying him everywhere, won't put him down, and giving him lots of hugs. I thought I knew why, and it was confirmed by this little exchange:

Me: "Why do you love that little bear so much?"

Maddie: "Because if I don't love him a lot he will be evil and be mean to my other toys."

Poor thing. Maybe I should just D.I. it and save my daughter from this horrible weight.

Merry Christmas From The Harris Family

Yearly picture with Santa:

Christmas card this year:

Volunteering at a soup kitchen with Josh's firm:

After three hours of bussing and picking up trash, Josh and I sat down at one of the tables to take a breath. One of the other volunteers came over and offered us a drink and food. Apparently we look homeless. :o)

High fives all around!

This was me when I won Bingo on the Disney cruise. (I like this one better than the one where Josh won because I look slightly less crazy.)

I did a celebration that highly resembled this in my office just now. I just finished my second year law school final exams. It is a wonderful feeling. I just wish I had someone like this Disney cruise employee to give me a high five right now.

I should probably attack this pile of mail in my to do pile, or do some of the backed up laundry, or finally go grocery shopping, or respond to the emails in my inbox, or make and send some Christmas cards, or pay some much needed attention to Josh and Maddie. I'd like to attack this pile of untouched Time magazines or the hordes of Oprah episodes I missed on my TiVo.

But I think I will just sit in my living room and stare. At nothing in particular. Law school is DRAINING and HARD. And incredibly FULFILLING. Okay bye.

Sharing the Good News

I completely try to avoid money talk on this blog. But right now I'm going to get specific. I always wanted to go on a Disney cruise, but the cost is....well...expensive. (They don't have an onboard casino and did I mention they have free babysitting all day on board?!?!) For example, it would have cost us about $4700 for this 8 day cruise we went on. But instead, it only cost us about $1200. How? (You might ask.)

I became a "travel agent" and got a travel agent discount. Basically, I called Global Travel at (800)715-4440 or www.globaltravel.com and bought the $100 travel agent license. There are no tests to take or any requirements. You pay them $100 (there are different levels of licenses, but this is the cheapest) and they give you a license number (called an iata #). Then you are an official travel agent. They have a website that you can get on and find deals (hence, the amazing deal for the Disney Cruise). It was super simple!

A Happy Boat

We were lucky enough to celebrate Charlie's birthday on the Disney Magic. It was a beautiful, clean, fun, friendly boat. I would highly recommend the Disney cruise. (Did I mention there is free babysitting all day on the ship?!)

Having fun at the welcome party.

Muster Station Drill

Swimming at Castaway Cay

Pirate in the Caribbean Party

Watching Tangled in 3D

The group at Cozumel

Exploring the Mayan ruins. This site was used for fertility, so Josh and I did our best to make good of the location. he he.

Holding and playing with baby sea turtles.

Unfortunately, the boys picked up a new hobby of shuffleboard. Whenever Josh disappeared, he could be found here, which was the location of many late night hustling and betting and other boy nonsense.

Eating key lime pie at Key West.

As you can see, Maddie loved the butterfly conservatory. She said it was "better than Disneyland."

I'm not super excited about posting this picture because I look kind of crazy, but Josh and I both won at Bingo. Talk about good luck!

And here are just a handful of the Disney characters we saw on board.

And a definite highlight for me, we got to swim with and ride and kiss and dance with dolphins in the Cayman Islands. As you can see, it wasn't just a highlight for only me.

Big.Garth.Fan.

My very first concert ever was Garth Brooks. Big Fan. I was so darn freaking excited that Garth was not only coming out of retirement, but was going to perform in my own home town. (As stated earlier, Vegas isn't such a bad place to live.) Until I learned that it is basically impossible to get tickets......That is.....unless your brother tells you that there is an NFR code that allows you to buy the tickets before the general public. So at 10:00am on the dot I was on Ticketmaster buying tickets. And as luck would have it, I was early enough to get SECOND ROW. Booyeah! This was my view. And let me just tell you, it was a VERY AMAZING concert. He is still the best performer (in my humble opinion). Josh was out of town for depos, so I went with our parents, Linda, Karen & Rick. Sadly, my dad had to work out of town that weekend too. So now I have to hope that I'm lucky enough to get 1st row tickets next time I try so I can take my Dad and Josh. :o)

Impending Blackout

So......my law school finals are in the next two weeks. Which means my blog will go dark until after my brain turns itself back on after the last exam.

A very brief update until then:

All my siblings were able to come together from all over the country for Thanksgiving, which is always a fun thing. We carried on the traditions that we are creating for ourselves, like a girls night, a guy golfing morning, and everyone sharing sickness germs. I even made jello for the first time for Josh so that he wouldn't starve on Thanksgiving day. I was very proud.

Maddie's latest weird thing is her "baby egg" named "Miletone." She wanted to keep it safe and didn't want anyone to touch it so she put in this bowl and wrote "Maddie's Boring Thing" so nobody would be tempted to look inside. Where does she come up with this crap? :o)

We got the Christmas tree up before law school finals. Phew. (Check out Josh's face. Awesome.)

Maddie wanted her own little tree in her room. She took picking out ornaments for her tree VERY seriously.

Sometimes Sunday afternoons seem incredibly long, so we were happy that our friends joined us on a trip out to Lake Mead to feed the fish. When it's not June, July or August, I actually think Las Vegas is a nice place to live.