I need to vent a little. I was going to share some of my resolutions with you, but I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Today's post is totally dedicated to a certain toy store that for this post we will call Joys R Puss. My kids each received $20 gift cards from JRP from my husband's work during the annual kids party.

After much finagling, and after losing one gift card for more than 48 hours, we convinced the kids to wait till after Christmas to spend their dough.

Today was the big day. The long awaited trip to Joys R Puss. Three kids 9 and under. It's like taking an alcoholic to the liquor store and saying just pick one small thing.

We were there not even five minutes when everyone, including me, realized that we had to pee. So we all went to the bathroom and we found the dreaded AUTOMATIC TOILET. Nothing strikes fear in my toilet-trained children more than the automatic toilet.

I have dreams that include meeting the inventor of the automatic toilet and forcing him/her to take my children to the bathroom. Seriously.

My oldest and my youngest took turns covering the sensor so they could go to the bathroom. My middle daughter, who is by far our most stubborn child, was absolutely terrified and continued to refuse to go to the bathroom.

I was forced to use the dreaded ultimatum.."Either you go while I hold this sensor or we all leave and come back some other time to use our gift cards. Your decision."

Well you can guess what happened and we were finally free from the bathroom. Total time: 25 minutes. No kidding.

Next it was off to the baby doll isle, which is middle daughter's addiction. I told her to pick something other than a doll because for Christmas she received five new members of her ever growing doll family. She could not decide. Total time: 15 minutes.

My son now informs me that he has to go to the bathroom again...No. 2. No kidding.

Total additional time in the bathroom: 15 minutes.

Now we are headed to the Nerf gun section. My son is looking for a gun "Not hard to shoot."
On the way to the Nerf guns, youngest sees a motorized jeep and decides he's going to get that instead of a gun. Not a remote controlled jeep. The big one, that you ride in your yard. He proceeds to have a melt down when I tell him it cost $500 and that he only has $20. "It's not fair, all the boys toys cost $500 and the girls toys are only $20. I hate girls."

He caves and decides he wants a "Nerf-like" dart gun nearly the same size as him with "rapid fire action". None of these words sound good to me, but I've already been in the store for over an hour and really just want to leave.

Oldest wants a DS game. Joys R Puss is having a sale on DS games and apparently you needed to be there when they opened to find any. After, trying to barter an additional $10 out of me for more than 20 minutes, Oldest finally found a $19.99 detective game. The same game I tried to show her 19 1/2 minutes ago.

The electronics department has it's own cashiers so we have to check out the DS game there, but they won't ring up the gun. I have to put $1 something on my debit card.

Now it's back to the baby doll section. UGH. After unsuccessfully finding a doll with hair that you can take in the tub that is not a Barbie, Polly Pockets came to the rescue!

Mommy is now skipping towards the check out. Total time at Joys R Puss: 1 hour 40 minutes. Most of which was spent in the bathroom.

After all of that we returned home to find out that son's gun doesn't work. Are you kidding me? Am I being punked? No it really doesn't work.

Thankfully, dear husband agreed to take it back to the store and to help youngest pick out something else, cause I was about to lose it.

Number one New Year's resolution: To avoid purchasing anything from Joys R Puss for the remainder of my life.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and a perfect time to reflect over some of the highs and lows of 2008.

My oldest daughter turned 9. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that in a few short months I'll have been a parent for an entire decade. This year's party didn't go as planned. We had to reschedule it because of illness and then most of the family couldn't come to the rescheduled event. It was a little overwhelming without the help I was used to and the girls seemed to bicker a lot, but daughter seemed to be oblivious to it all.

Beach weekends are better than therapy. I had the opportunity to spend two glorious weekends with my sister and a dozen of our friends "scrapbooking at the beach" which is really code for hopeless drunk.

One Wedding, two funerals. We witnessed our long time friend, and sometimes roommate, marry his soul mate; we said goodbye suddenly to my cousin, Michelle's husband, "Tiny", who died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident and we said good-bye to Baby Ike.

"Bob" got a stay of execution. After waiting months for an appointment with a plastic surgeon to look at my middle daughter's "odd mole", I realized that even if this particular PS was the only PS in my county, I wouldn't let him touch any of my children. Rude. Ignorant. Bastard. Also, after finding out my middle daughter named her mole Bob it seemed rude to have him cut off. We decided to use the less evasive approach of monitoring his growth pattern and making sure he uses sun screen. So far he has not changed in nearly a year.

Camping and Dutchwonderland. We took the kids tent camping for five nights and I realized that is about 2 days too long for me. We also had the opportunity to spend a full day at Dutchwonderland, an amusement park not far from our house. The kids (and the grown ups) had a wonderful time.

A 7 year old's baby shower. Not really, but I did buy baby shower decorations for my middle daughter's birthday party. She wanted to have a baby doll party and believe it or not this isn't a popular party. Her guests and their babies all seemed to have a blast. Now as long as we don't revisit this theme in 10 years all will be right with the world.

ALS walk. For the third year, I attended the ALS walk in memory of my Aunt who died nearly three years ago to this date of this dreaded disease.

Scrapbook convention. My mom and I attended the CK scrapbook convention again this year. Unfortunately, because of work obligations my sister couldn't come this year. It wasn't the same without her, but we still had loads of fun. Pretty soon my mom will be coming to the"dark side" and scrappin' with us too. LOL

REBA and Kelly. My mom and I had the opportunity to see this concert and it was fantabulous! I never laughed so hard when "Barbara Jean" did the opening. Great memories for us both.

Zoinks! What a great party. My son had a Scooby Doo party, complete with a masked bandit that stole the Scooby treats. I'll never forget his reaction when he saw daddy in a Frankenstein mask trying to get away with the treats.

A houseful for Thanksgiving. We were blessed to have a houseful of guest for Thanksgiving, including my dad and step mom, my in laws and my sister and her family. We had dinner and then my sister and I got to shop on black Friday. It doesn't get much better than that!

Blessed. Going into 2009, I feel very blessed. My nephew is out of the hospital and according to my sister his blood sugar levels have remained stable. All of my children are healthy, though I'm a little under the weather. We still have three more days of vacation and we are waiting to hear word about weather a shelter dog will be joining our family. **more about that tomorrow**

Here's hoping that 2009 brings more laughter than tears to you and yours.

We've been celebrating Christmas since the middle of the month starting with my dad's extended family and then celebrating with my mom and her husband last weekend, we topped things off by spending three days at my husband's parents house.

Here's a picture of me, the kids and my grandma. I just got my hair chopped off and can't decide if I like it or not. Below is a picture of my family with my dad and his wife.

Here's hoping Santa brought this much excitement to your house! He sure brought a lot of excitement to ours. We will be traveling over the next few days. I'll try to post, but I'm not sure I'll be able to tolerate my in-laws dial up.

I'm happy to report that my nephew was released from the hospital this afternoon. Now the real challenge begins. My sister and her family will need to learn how to deal with this and how to administer insulin and all the challenges that go along with that.

Please pray that she and her husband can keep their sanity and be there for each other. Right now there is a lot of stressors between them, which are only coupled by the timing of all of this.

Thank you for your concerns and Merry Christmas to all of you!

Here are some photo's from this weekend. We celebrated Christmas at my mother's house in Virginia. Thankfully, the weather cooperated. Here is a picture of me with my new Webkinz, Mistletoe the hippo. LOL



Here's my husband, who hates getting his picture taken. Shhhh, don't tell him that I posted this one. His hair is looking a little count dracula-ish...