What a Life!

Yes, Christmas is over, and we got some really nice gifts.

A quick disclaimer: we appreciated all of our gifts, and just because something you gave us isn’t mentioned on this list doesn’t mean we didn’t like it.

Steve got a nice Christmas bonus from work, which we used part of to buy him a notebook computer. We talked about getting a notebook and sharing it, but he hates having to ask me to get off the computer when he wants to study…so the new computer will be just for him and I will continue to use the old one. I agreed to that arrangement with just one request: could I have a new chair at the desk?

Here is a picture of our desk with the old chair:

Steve said something about that chair being from the kitchen table his parents had when he was growing up. We have two chairs like that. The little piece at the bottom of the leg on that one kept falling off, and the other one has some kind of screw in the seat that came up to far and pokes you when you sit on it. Incidentally, we also have two chairs left from the table my parents had when I was growing up. They are equally as ugly and have their problems, but I won’t post a picture of them here too because I might exceed my whining limit for the day.

So here is the new desk chair:

The floor mat is new too, even though you also see it in the picture of the old desk chair. In the other picture, you can see the chair, and that’s all that matter – I didn’t want to go to the trouble of removing the floor mat just for the picture – sorry.

But isn’t my new chair nice?

Steve likes desk chairs with arms, but as a mother who spent many hours nursing her baby and surfing the web, I will tell you that a chair without arms is much easier to nurse in than a chair with arms. Since I am the one using the old computer, we bought a chair without arms.

Moving on now…

We opened gifts for just our family on Christmas Eve. We really haven’t had much trouble with Ben wanting to get into the gifts. Perhaps that was because he didn’t really know what they were or, more importantly, that at some point we were going to unwrap them. So when it came time to unwrap them, we’d give him a gift and tell him to unwrap it and he’d just look at us funny, like “Why did you give me this?”

Eventually, he started to get into it a little more. But, we must confess that we were glad we hadn’t wrapped many gifts for him.

The gift he was unwrapping there was a little 1940’s F-150 pickup I found at Kohl’s. The other gift he unwrapped that evening was a set of storybooks which Daddy read him right before he went to bed.

I made Steve Fuzzyfeet. Of course, they were huge because they hadn’t been felted yet, but he tried them on anyway just to see if they fit.

He also liked the sweater I made him, though the sleeves were definitely too long. I was going to take the extra off the end and just re-do the ribbing, but the sleeves are actually bigger around that I would like so I’m thinking of taking another approach, though I do not yet know what that approach will be. It may have something to do with taking the sleeve off the sweater and frogging (knitting term for ripping out stitches…rip-it, rip-it) down to where I want the sleeve to hit the armpit and then re-knitting the sleeve cap. We shall see…

I was going to put the hybrid mittens in his stocking on Christmas morning, but I decided that I was too anxious to see if they fit so I gave them to him Christmas Eve as well. They fit, and he really likes them.

Sorry…no pictures of the sweater or the gloves. I was to worried about whether they’d fit to think to take a picture, and I hate to bother Steve now and ask him to model them just so I can have a picture. My apologies…

Steve gave me a red Nebraska shirt so I have something to wear when we go to games – can you believe I have lived here five years and I haven’t had a Nebraska shirt? Oh my! Then he gave me a roasting pan with a V-rack like I wanted.

The funny thing was, I am the one who keeps track of our finances, and I go online to reconcile our checkbook more than once a week. Just a silly little habit of mine… Anyway. But that means that I saw how much money he spent and where he spent it. Well, he got the shirt at the mall at a store named Steve & Barry’s which I could have sworn was a restaurant but actually sells shirts for various sports teams. The the roasting pan he got at Linens and Things for a mere $5-something – I had no idea they sold pans, and obviously he got a good deal on it because what can you buy for just $5-something? And the rack for the roasting pan he got at this store called “Habitat” which I had never heard of, but I envisioned some little waterfall deal to set on display in the living room from a store with a name like that. So yes, he surprised me even though I saw how much he spent and where he spent it. And I was very happy with my gifts.

Here is a picture of my roasting pan along with the remnants of the Shoefly Pie I made for Christmas dinner, the pie server I treated myself to when I bought a gift for someone else at Wiliams and Sonoma, and the butter dish I didn’t realize I had until I decided to go through our wedding presents to see if I had gotten any pretty dishes I could use to serve Christmas dinner. You can also see my new Tupperware canisters that I got when we were in Oklahoma in the background – the large canister holds a whole 5 lb. bag of flour, the third largest one holds an entire 4 lb bag of sugar – that’s right, folks, no partial bags of flour and sugar taking up valuable real estate in the pantry anymore. This picture, of course, was taken today.

And that’s all for now. This entry is long enough. I wouldn’t want to tire my happy readers. More about Christmas Day later.