Month: January 2011

Today was Taylor’s last full vacation day (he has to work tomorrow night so he’ll need to get up early in the morning and go to bed in the afternoon) and for some inexplicable reason he decided to spend it at Ikea. Crazy, but who am I to argue 😉

We’d been talking about getting a desk for him, and I’d come up with an Ikea hack using some pieces from a tv stand that I’d disassembled as a desktop. We were just going to get some little shelves and legs to hold it up, but ended up going in a completely different direction! Taylor found an actual desk he liked that was on sale, so we got that in black. It was actually closer to the black-brown colour of the bookcase we already have in the office area and a little drawer unit Taylor picked out today, so I thought it’d match nicely. Except when we got home and opened the box it was the wrong colour!

Oops! So I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow: painting a desk!
Taylor also bought me a new desk chair, hooray!

What I really went crazy on this trip was toys. I’ve been wanting to replace the crappy, chewed-up plastic toy food I have for the daycare kids, but I didn’t want to get wooden food (too expensive and easily ruin if Georgie gets ahold of it) and Ikea really came through! They had these plush food sets- breakfast, desserts, fruits and veggies– and I wanted them all, but unfortunately had some sort of a brain malfunction and forgot to buy the fruit and veggie sets! Luckily, Symphony’s grandma is going to Ikea on Tuesday so she’s going to pick them up for me.

I also got this little barn:

… that opens up to be a farm!

I also got farm vehicles and extra animals to go with it. I really like this set- I reminds me of a little house with furniture and bears my mom made me for Christmas once when I was a little kid. Of course, I probably could have made this stuff myself, but I then if the kids tried to play with them I’d be like this grumpy bull!

So as I posted (and whiningly tweeted), Mini Christmas didn’t really go as I’d hoped, which really upset me. I made a nice dinner (which I rarely do on Wednesdays) and after we were supposed to open presents, take a family picture in our new pajamas and then watch Elf. What ACTUALLY happened was Sym acted like a whiny, uncooperative brat, and Taylor couldn’t find the piece to attach his camera to the tripod mount and had a rage fit about it. I may or may not have started crying that night in the toothpaste aisle of the drugstore, because they were out of my favorite toothpaste and it was just the LAST STRAW. Anyway. I had big talks with both Taylor and Sym about how their actions made me feel blah blah blah and got everything worked out.

Taylor and I spent Christmas in Kelowna with his moms. I’ll be honest, I really don’t like Kelowna, but I wanted to try my hardest to be positive and cheerful, partially to show Taylor up for his performance at Mini Christmas, but mostly because I wanted to have a nice Christmas myself & not ruin anyone else’s. I think I succeeded? It was easier than last time we were there for Christmas because there was way less snow, and I didn’t have to try to keep Sym entertained or run interference with Dougal. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve, and then spent the rest of our days bumming around. We took Georgie and Kichou for long walks, watched some real gems of movies (four words: JENNIFER LOPEZ ROMANTIC COMEDY) and just pretty much relaxed. It was nice! We also visited with Taylor’s sister Jaime and her boyfriend Shawn on Monday (they’d gone to see Shawn’s family for Christmas).

Taylor’s grandmother came over for dinner on Christmas Day, which was interesting and also awkward- she started feeding our dogs giant chunks of ham and I ended up like, slow-motion lunging across the table yelling “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” like I was taking a bullet for someone, and after that she was very snotty with me- she didn’t even say goodbye to me when she left until I stepped right in her path to say it to her. So that was kind of :/ but oh well. Better than cleaning hammy dog vomit off the carpet!

Taylor really wanted to make it up to me for ruining my Mini Christmas, so he went ALL OUT for our NYE. Since it was a Friday night, we had Sym, so we didn’t go out or anything. Instead, we made an ENORMOUS feast- Taylor put himself in charge of buying food and he went completely overboard! We had mini cheeseburgers, perogies with pepper and bacon, chicken strips AND popcorn chicken, fries, sweet & sour pork, a huge platter of veggies, salsa con queso & chips, gold & silver cupcakes, two kinds of Cadbury’s mini eggs (popping & regular) and a box of Ferrero Rochers (of which I think Sym ate half). We also had root beer for Sym and wine and champagne for Taylor and I. It was basically enough for to feed a family of 100, but I swear we ate almost everything! It was pretty gross.

After we ate, we played a round of Apples to Apples, which is always fun with Sym. She laughs her face off at everything and is like, an Apples to Apples savant or something- even if she doesn’t understand the word or doesn’t know the people or activities on her cards, she always manages to put down something totally, hilariously apt. She ended up winning, and then Taylor had the brilliant idea of pushing the couch back and playing Dance Central on the Xbox. It was basically the funnest time ever! Once we were all sweaty and gross, we put the furniture back and curled up on the couch to watch our traditional NYE movie, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. I don’t remember why we always watch it, but they’ve done studies, and sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

Because we started watching it so late we were right in the middle at midnight, so we paused and had a little toast. I let Sym try a tiny thimble of champagne and she was not impressed- she didn’t actually even sip it, just dipped her finger in, licked it, and made a horrible face. I guess I don’t have to worry about her turning into a preteen lush! Once the movie was over I put her to bed, and then Taylor and I stayed up drunkenly watching the same Jem & the Holograms episodes I watched by myself the other week. I don’t even know.

So that was my holiday season, sorry about the lack of real posts but vacation is almost over and life will be back to normal, so hopefully I’ll be back to my regular blogging schedule! I hope everyone had a nice holiday season, and so do my dogs 🙂