1. Write more. I wanted to reach 10,000 words on my young adult novel in 2009. I didn't. In 2010, I want to surpass that goal and then some.
2. Craft more. I spend far too much time on this computer and not enough time in my craft room.
3. Yell less. Hello...my name is kisa and I have NO patience.
4. Eat better. Pretty self-explanatory but yet so hard to accomplish.
5. Walk more. I'm going to invest in a good step counter and try to reach 10,000 steps a day. (That counts as exercise, right?)
6. Eliminate some clutter. The clutter monster is always trying to take over spaces in the house. I plan to keep him at bay!
7. Get Organized: I often have trouble accomplishing things because my organizational skill aren't what you would call good. I'm going to try to get better at putting things back where they belong and maintaining a certain space for certain items. Especially in the kitchen and in my craft room.
8. Quality time: Spend some time alone with each kid and my husband once a month.
9. See family. More than just the holidays.
10. Plan some day trips. I want to go to this craft store and I just can't ever seem to plan a trip there. Plus there is a doll factory not far from here that middle G would love; and there's the zoo...and Hershey....and....well you get the picture.

What do you have planned in 2010???

Dear Santa,

I realize that your probably busy getting ready for the BIG trip around the world tonight but I wanted to add a few last minute items to my list.

Admittedly, they aren't all for me and some of them may require that you pull in some additional assistance from other magical creatures including the Easter Bunny and the Toothfairy.

To quote a song, here is my grown-up Christmas list.

A big bag full of cures: Please include cures for Diabetes, Cancer and ALS, but do not feel like you can't throw in some additional one. In fact, a universal cure would be most appreciated.

More involved grandparents: Can you send a wake up call to both my mom and my dad about quality time. Please include directions to my house and a school calendar highlighting all the activities the kids will be participating in.

That everyone is blessed with friends like mine I've said it before and I'll say it again: A strong group of women (who don't tear each other down) is better than any type of therapy.


Extra patience: I really need to yell at my kids less. Between you and I, I think it's their fault because they don't listen, but really I'm kind of "snappy". If you can bring me some patience wrapped in a box with a big red bow that would be greatly appreciated.

That about sum's it up. Feel free to toss in some craft supplies. You know how much I love those.

Your number one fan,

~kisa~

P.S. Merry Christmas Bloggyland. I hope you get everything on your list!

• The Joys of Pajama Day. That's right...I got to wear my pajamas to work today. Jealous much?
• That, for the most part, I work with some really nice, amazing people.
• The closer it gets to Christmas the more out of control the kiddos become. It's like a drug.
• That I really do believe in Santa Claus.
• That parents seldom read the menu, let alone any changes you make to it.

What did you learn at work/home this week?

So thanks to Jenners I read more books in 2009 than I ever had. I didn't blog about all of them, but I did blog about most of them.

You should know that I'm a very sLLLLLLLLLoooooooooWWWWWW reader. I have to be really into the book to not have to renew it at least once from the library.

This book: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld is the first in a series of four. It takes place in the future and based on scientific research about what people find attractive at the age of 16 everyone gets made over.

The perfect face, the perfect body, the perfect everything.

But some are rebelling. Some want to remain "ugly".

This book challenges preconceived ideas of beauty and for that alone it is worth the read.

Hoping to finish the next in the series, fittingly entitled Pretties, by the end of January.

Like I said.....I read sssssllllllllloooooooooowwwwwww.

Those of us in the northeast portion of the U.S. are buried in snow. This weekend we got about 18 inches of the white stuff in one big dumping.

Nothing makes my kids happier.



Here they are in their fort that daddy helped them build by filling buckets up with snow. They were quite impressed.




Here's a view of the sidewalk in front of my neighbors house the day after the storm hit. My husband was snowblowing and snowblowing but it was hard to keep ahead of it. At times it was coming down 3 inches an hour.




This is my mailbox. I'm trying to bury it completely just to piss off my mail carrier. Regular readers know that she deems my mailbox undeliverable on a regular basis. Wonder what she thought of this....lol

It's a blizzard here in a Pennsylvania and a perfect opportunity to catch up with your blogs and hear about all the warm and fuzzy things going on in all of your lives.

Then I read this and I got pissed.

Let me sum it up for you. Jaden Duttine is a 2 year old little boy with stage four cancer. You can read his story by clicking on his cute picture along the right hand side of my blog.

Supahmommy, who is a friend of the family, offered to hold an auction to help raise some fundage for this family because like it or not cancer is expensive.

Many bloggers, including myself, donated numerous items for the auction. Ebay agreed to host and waive any fees associated with the whole shindig.

Until now.

Now Ebay is trying to take nearly $500 from a little boy with cancer.

$500 bucks to Ebay is nothing. $500 bucks to the Duttine family is groceries, a car payment, co-pays. You get the picture.

Join me in blogging about this. Twittering about this. Sending an email to the big-wigs at ebay. Links and a suggested letter are on Supah's blog.

If Ebay doesn't change their mind please consider, like me, canceling your Ebay account. After all, there is always Craig's list.

Thanks for your help!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. If you have school aged children or even if you know where a school is, somewhere there is a lunch lady making a holiday meal.

It may not be today, as it was at my school. It may not be tomorrow. Hell, it may have been last week. But somewhere, at some public school, is an underpaid lunch lady making a holiday meal.

If you are thinking about last minute gift ideas for your child's lunch lady (and I mean who isn't), the day of the holiday meal is a great (fan-f*cking-tastic) day to deliver some booze.

Our meal included 225 bowls of turkey and gravy, 230 stuffing balls, 200 servings of mashed potatoes, 150 servings of sweet potatoes, more corn than Idaho, a mint chocolate chip cookie and cranberries.

The stuffing is made from celery, onions, and actual bread. It all gets put through a grinder and formed in to balls and baked. 98 percent of it is put down the garbage disposal. It is painful.

Just imagine cooking Thanksgiving dinner and inviting 200 of your closest friends over. Everyone fills their plates to overflowing and then gets up and dumps it in your sink.

That's how lunch ladies feel after holiday meals.

Wouldn't you need a drink?

Working in an elementary school with Christmas fast approaching is sort of like working in an amusement park. There are quite a few over stimulated, excited children anxiously awaiting holiday break.

Most of the staff, from principal on down, looks a little tired.

Things I learned this week include:

• Offering the choice between grape jelly and strawberry jelly can cause quite a pause amongst our youngest students.
• Everyone under 10 thinks all cheese must be orange.
• Touching the oven with your arm, even if it is for a millisecond, will result in an ugly looking burn.
• The amount of work done in a week is no where near the amount of pay you receive.
• Lunch ladies are like Santa -- we definitely know which kids should be on the naughty list and which ones should be on the nice list.

Five days till my well-deserved holiday break!

Friday started out a little crazy and the theme just carried over all throughout our weekend. I woke up to the phone ringing at 6:55 a.m. on Friday. It was the head cook I work for informing me she was sick and wouldn't be in. Something that doesn't happen very often as she has approximately 274 accumulated sick days and no I'm not making that up.

At 7:10 I realized that little G and Big G both have fevers again.

Hubby volunteered to stay home with them and take them to the doctors. They were fighting fevers on and off all week as well as coughs.

Oldest has pneumonia, youngest is getting better.

I had to figure out how to feed 200 + kids without enough pizza. I burnt my arm on the oven and our sub said the same thing over and over again. Fun times.

Kids are on the mend and my dog (who always looks so happy) loves my Santa hat. Thought I'd share this pic.



Saturday we had breakfast with Santa tickets at oldest's school. She begged to go and since we already paid for it and since you can't really "give" someone pneumonia we decided to go. I'm pretty sure this means we won't be winning that coveted parents of the year award. Though I'm doubtful we were still in the running anyway.

To further prove that my kids aren't even the slightest bit sick, we took them to my husband's work holiday party. It was specifically for the kids and at a local roller skating rink. Youngest and Middle have never been on skates so it was quite a work out holding them up. I told hubby not to get skates, but he didn't listen and took a couple of spills I wish I would have gotten on video.

And just to prove that you can't do too much stuff in one day, youngest was invited to a Cookie Baking party by a little girl in his kindergarten class. Her mom pulled out all the stops. The kids made four different kinds of cookies. They each took turns putting in different ingredients. It was a nice event. At the end, they took home a handful of each of the cookies.

It was much warmer at the cookie party than the skating rink that reached a comfortable -12 degrees by lunch time. Seriously, it was freezing in there.

Sunday I should have rested but alas I went to Sunday School, Church and shopping. The good news: I am pretty much done. Need a few stocking stuffers and I need to get busy wrapping, but most of the list is checked off.

What did you do this weekend?

I'm playing Game 11 over at Jenner's Life with Little One and more. Her challenge: Write and Over-The-Top Holiday letter. This was a lot of fun. As someone who actually writes one of these, I found this one to be more entertaining and am considering sending it instead of the one I usually send. LOL

Thanks for the fun, Jenners.

Season’s Greetings from Nome, Alaska.

We decided to take a spur of the moment trip to the amazing state of Alaska. Thankfully, Inez, our children’s’ live-in tutor was able to make some changes in her schedule and travel with us. This allowed hubby and me some well-deserved kid-free time to go deep see arctic fishing. Hubby was fortunate enough to catch yet an undiscovered fish. The deep sea arctic fishing board is entertaining naming the species for him.

The kiddos are doing great. Oldest will soon be 11 and can speak six languages fluently. She is currently involved in soccer, tia-kwo-do, softball, cheer leading and all-state figure skating. As you can imagine this keeps us hoping.

Middle turned 8 over the summer and mastered Chinese. She was invited to speak at an all girls' school in China about her American culture. It was a great time for all of us as we were able to take in the many sights China has to offer. She continues to grow artistically and currently has paintings on display in museums in New York, Paris and California. If you are interested in purchasing any of her pieces, you may contact her agent directly at 555-1212.

Youngest is and always will be our little spitfire. He is six years old and in the 4th grade. Because of his amazing intelligence we are uncertain if we will be able to continue to school him in the United States. We are looking into doctoral programs abroad.

Hubby is excitedly awaiting word from the Arctic Fishing Board about the name of his newly discovered fish species and continues his work with the Center for Disease Control. He is making great progress with his research involving cures for Diabetes, Cancer, ALS and Weiner dog dwarfism.

I have been busy working on my 200th novel, which has been selected as the Oprah book of the month for March 2010. Look for my wink and ear tug when we premiere the book on her show early that month.

Our family missions’ trips to Cambodia, India, Russia, Indonesia and Shrelanka were a great success and we hope to be able to travel even more in 2010.

May the blessings you receive next year be as abundant as the exaggerations contained in this letter!

I did pretty well on the ol' to do list over the weekend. Still hammering away at that newsletter but I'm sure the finished project will be laughed about for years to come.

Thursday we went to my oldest daughter's holiday chorus program. It was very well done and she seemed to truly enjoy herself.



Saturday we put up the tree. I went with the fake one this year for fear of what the dog may do to a real tree. This is his first Christmas with us and I think we ought to break him in gradually. So far he has only eaten a few minuscule items. The tree is still intact.

It's time for Friday High Five where you can gather your thoughts into five random things and post.

It's easy.

You can do it.

Today I'm trying to wrap my head around all of the stuff I need to accomplish in the next 20 days! That's right. Christmas is right around the corner and what have you done?

I have minimal shopping completed and not a thing wrapped. Here's what I would like to check off my list for the weekend.

1. Decorate. We have outside lights up but that's it. No tree. No decorations. Nothing. The outside of my house looks festive, the inside of my house looks like February.
2. Write my newsletter. Mock me if you must, but I write a family newsletter. Yep. I'm that person. The one who sends you the cheeky letter every year. Except mine is in the form of a newspaper page and it tells it like it is instead of pretends how rosey things are. This year it will include a Cafeteria Corner section and a tribute to the grandparents I lost this year.
3. Use my Kohl's cash. I have $80 in Kohl's cash that expires on Monday. Hello. We can't let that happen.
4. Finish up Teacher presents: Every year I make Thank You cards for the teachers at Christmas. I figure it works to ways. It says thanks for putting up with my kid on a regular basis and it allows them to thank everyone else for their stupid gifts.
5. Holiday Names: Every year we participate in a Christmas Cheer program that provides gifts for some needy kids in our school district. I always buy for three kids and try to involve my three. Those gifts need to be turned into my school district by the 14th and I'd really like to finish them up.

Let's not even talk about wrapping....

What do you have planned this weekend?

It's time once again to enlighten all of you with random cafeteria knowledge.


I know you are eager with anticipation. That being said here are the top five things I learned in the cafeteria this week:

1. Ketchup travels quite far: My co-worker, D, decided to "test" a ketchup pump unaware that it was still filled with ketchup. It landed on my back, on my hat and in my ear! She was more than five feet away from me. It was hilarious!
2. Tuna fish is actually available in gallon size cans.
3. Lots of hand washing, dish washing and food prep mixed with Pennsylvania's lovely winter weather equals painfully dry hands.
4. Cinnamon buns qualify as a healthy breakfast under federal guidelines. This obviously means that the Poptart I have every morning for breakfast is good for me as long as I have it with milk.
5. Polish Heritage day involves a corn dog and pierogis. A whole wheat corn dog, mind ya. Apparently, corn dogs aren't as good for you as cinnamon buns. Who knew??

What did you learn this week?

P.S. Are you a lurker who has never commented? Do you want to follow my blog but haven't taken that leap. Don't be shy. Jump on in. I'd love to hit fifty followers before the end of the week. You know you want to...

I'm happy (so happy) to report that my refrigerator is now "breathing" again. Let's all stand and do the happy dance! It's cost $133 to fix and replace the fan, but that is A LOT better than picking up a new one a few weeks before Christmas!

YIKES! Breathing a sigh of relief. Now I need to take the van in for a recall and take oldest to the eye doctor on Thursday.

It comes in threes, right? After all of this, we should have smooth sailing through the holidays!

Keeping my fingers crossed!

My oldest daughter is almost 11 and full of tween spunk. She disagrees just to disagree. She talks back, she thinks most of my suggestions are stupid. On the other hand, she still likes to sit on my lap even though she is almost the same size as me. She brushes my hair.....a lot. She looks exactly like me. She talks exactly like me. She wants to be an astronaut when she grows up.

Yesterday, she made a bad decision.

Yesterday, just like every weekday, I dropped her at the bus stop. It was raining. I told her to get into our neighbors van who was also waiting at the bus stop.

I told her I loved her.

I drove away, headed to the elementary school to make lunch. Other two kids safe and secure in the van.

Five minutes later, her bus pulled up. She put on her hood and jumped out of the van.

IN FRONT OF A SUBURBAN! Thankfully, he wasn't on the phone. Thankfully, he wasn't distracted. Thankfully, he slammed onto his breaks and stopped.

She never even noticed.

But one second later, she would have been hit.

One second later, our Thanksgiving would have been quite different.

One second later and I would have received that phone call that brought me to my knees.

Today, I feel very thankful.

I'm not at work today. Don't worry it's alright, after all it's hamburger helper day. (insert gag) Middle G is on the mend. She has been fever free for 24 hours but she is still coughing like a seasoned smoker. It keeps her (and I) up at night so I thought she could use another day of rest.

Her response "I'm sooooooo bored."

Can you imagine if our children ever really were bored. They're brains would melt.

Anyway, I thought I would share this pathetic photo with you. At the pediatrician's there are giant signs that if your child has a cough and/or a fever they must wear a mask, a.k.a. swine flu. There are no books, not toys and easy to wipe down chairs in the waiting room.

Middle G had to wear the mask.

• family: Both immediate and extended. There really is no one quite like you (and I mean that in the most friendliest of ways). Family sees you at your happiest, they see you at your saddest. They offer a hand, they tell you when you've crossed a line. It doesn't get much better than that.
• Friends: I still think that a gaggle of close women is better than any therapist. People you look forward to seeing. People you can't wait to talk to, whether the news is good or bad. People who know when you need to get drunk, or shop, or just hang.
• bathtubs filled with bubbles: This one is self-explanatory. For me, a long hot steamy bubble bath is just about as good a sex.
• My craft room: It's just four walls, covered in polka-dots with just about every craft gadget you can think of. It's a little piece of heaven on earth.
• Peanut butter cups: If I don't stop eating the ones the kids got from trick-or-treating, my ass will soon be showing up on the local radar. There's a disturbance in the northern part of the county....it appears to be Wendy's ass. Onlookers are advised to seek cover. Film at 11 p.m.
• health: Last but, certainly not least, is our health. This time of year I think it is important to remind ourselves that we are one phone call away from falling to our knees. When the kids get on your nerves, or your mother calls at bedtime, or your husband forgets to pick up the milk, try to put things into perspective. Someone is celebrating Thanksgiving without their kid/mother/husband. Someone is grieving a loss, some are big, some are small.

Let's all be thankful more than one day in 2010.

It's time once again to tell you what I learned this week in the cafeteria. This week has been quite stressful for multiple reasons.

• Serving Thanksgiving dinner to elementary age children encourages waste. I think only two kids out of 200 ate the stuffing.
• Half days are twice the headache.
• When the head cook takes a personally day prepare for hell.
• Computers seldom do what you expect them to do.
• People will try to get away with anything if they think they can. For example, when the head cook was off the substitute making breakfast tried to take 100 chocolate milk with her to her building leaving me with about 50. We use more than that at breakfast. WTF?

Needless to say, I am happy this week is over. My middle daughter has been fighting a fever on and off all week. Traveling for my gram's funeral didn't help the situation and now she has pneumonia.

I think our weekend plans will include a lot of rest.

I would first like to say thank you to everyone who expressed their condolences at the loss of my grandmother earlier this week. I returned to my home town for her viewing and funeral. She was a wonderful woman who is, without a doubt, walking hand in hand with my grandfather down streets of gold.




It's time once again for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. Are you participating?

Today I decided to write about the most destructive thing my pet has ever done.

This weekend, like all weekends, flew by. We lost our soccer game and my craft show wasn't very fruitful.

I learned late Saturday night that my grandma wasn't doing well and sadly she died this morning.

I am very lucky to have known her for 37 years and I have many fond memories of times we shared together.

My grandma was a pint-sized powerhouse. She barely stood five foot. She had six kids, one of them my father. She lived as a widow for 8 years, until recently at her home caring for herself.

Last year we had a surprise birthday party for my dad. This is me, my gram and my sister. She was so tickled to be there (as you can tell).

Throughout my childhood we spent many a camping trip with both my grandma and my pappy. She was a fierce card player and didn't like to lose. We played dominoes and uno.

She loved having the family around for holidays and was able to visit me in Ohio numerous times.

I saw her grieve for my grandfather, mourn the loss of a grandchild, as well as a great-grandchild.

The last time I saw her I held her hand at the nursing home across the street from my in-laws house.

My 10 year old daughter was with me and she let grandma repeat her story about lunch over and over again without correction.

We shared cookies together.

I hope my daughter remembers this because I know I will never forget it.

Rest in peace, Gram. Give Pappy a hug from me.

Are you watching Glee? Are you as obsessed with this show as I am? I know it is cheesy and the actors hardly look like high school students, but I can't get enough of Glee.

Here's why:

~ Finn is so cute.

~Glee club director, Will, is even cuter.

~The music is awesome.

~Jane Lynch is the funniest, most under-rated actress currently working in Hollywood. I loved her on 2 1/2 men and in the movie 40 year old virgin. She is hilarious as the cheer leading coach on Glee.

~Very seldom does someone die. I'm so tired of dramas/comedies that feel the need to randomly kill off people. What ever happened to happy endings????

I LOVE GLEE!

Try to get past these twisted pictures and look at the cards. This Santa and reindeer are $1.00 stamps from Michael's. The inside says Merry Christmas (original I know) and Happy Holidays.