Happy New Year!

. . . and a belated Merry Christmas. I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas (my kids sure did), and that all are safely back home ready to start the new year. The kids were sure bummed tonight about starting back to school tomorrow, but they'll get back in the swing of things quickly, I'm sure.

I finally took down all the Christmas decorations tonight. It's always kind of sad to put it all away for another year, thinking about how different the kids will be next year, and wondering what surprises await us in the next 11 months. I do feel like I can breathe again, now that my house is de-cluttered and furniture and other things are back where they belong.

If I can figure out how to do it (and I'm going to try), I'll post the picture I took with my phone of Logan on Christmas day. We spent a couple of hours in the middle of the day in the emergency room of our local children's hospital getting three stitches in his wrist. Was he riding the new skateboard he got from Santa? NO, he was trying to open a box of laser tag guns with scissors and slipped, cutting an inch-long part of his inner wrist - bad. Good nurse that I am, I tried to clean it up and steri-strip it, only to have it ooze and bust open the strips about 30 second later. The stitches are gone now, and it's healing nicely - but he has a story to tell at school tomorrow. Wonder how bad the cut will sound by the end of the day (like a bad fishing story, I'm sure).

I'll post some pics soon - I know I've been bad about posting pictures. I haven't even looked at my camera in a week, and I have no idea what I got Christmas morning.

Oh, and check out Anna's blog - follow the link and vote for my sister!

The World Wide Web

Love it.

I'm sitting here in my house, in my pj's (yes, it's four in the afternoon, but I worked last night), and I just ordered the Christmas cards I've been fretting over for the past month. I'm a procrastinator, I know. I kept thinking I would get my superstar photographer sister to take photos and make me some cards, but our busy schedule never allowed for a photo shoot (our fault, not hers). Anyway, I just pulled up the old internet and clicked away until I found the card I liked, uploaded one of our Disney photos, and placed my order. Now I can go pick them up in an hour and take them to work with me tonight (along with some packages to wrap) and get some work done in the wee hours of the morning when all are snug in their beds.

Groovy.

Christmas tree kitty

So, last December we got this kitty, Daisy. She is a sweet, black and white kitty that came from Nana's house. We all love her. When she came to live with us, she was just a baby, maybe 7-8 weeks old, if that, and she was tiny.
Anyway, we didn't realize how much Daisy loved the Christmas tree last year until we returned home from our holiday trip to see family. That first night back, we'd been home about an hour when we heard a jingling in the tree and saw the black and white fur of our kitten at EYE-LEVEL in the tree. No problem, I thought, she's tiny, can't knock it over, and I pulled her out. I don't think she ever did it again before we put the tree away for the year.
Fast forward a year. Daisy is now a big, fat one year-old CAT. She sleeps all day and all night, stays in the house all the time, and eats. Except for the puppy chasing her around (rarely does she actually run), she gets little exercise. One thing has remained - she is fascinated by the Christmas tree.
It's not just the shiny ornaments, or the sparkly lights. It's the fact that it's a TREE. It doesn't smell like a tree, or have bark like a tree (it's fake). One thing it does have is branches, which function perfectly as a kitty ladder for her to climb on. Which she does. All the time.
I've tried to put a stop to this. I wrapped presents over a week ago, thinking that if I put some stuff under the tree, she'd stop sitting under it looking UP. Which might stop her from jumping UP in it. Didn't work
My latest trick is the No Scratch Spray, which is made to keep cats from clawing furniture. I've sprayed the tree every couple of days this week, and I think it's going to work. I thought maybe she would "learn" to stay away after a couple of days, but no. As soon as the smell dies down, she's back at it. Luckily, it doesn't stink to us humans, so I can spray it as often as I need to. I just hope it doesn't ruin any ornaments. I don't think it will.
It sure beats trying to tie it to the wall.