December 18, 2013

Christmas at Beebee's

(click here for today's pictures)

• An early morning for us-Rice Depot day.  I gave Campbell the choice of going and not going with me.  Part of me wanted her to go but the other part (a much larger part) wanted for her to not go.  She picked right and opted "stay and take care of Whitman."  I tried to explain that Nonna would be able to take care of Whitman and she could just go and play with Keaton.  I am sure that she did more taking care of (hauling the poor baby around by his arms) Whitman than playing with her sister.
• We dropped off the little ones at Nonna's house and even made it to the rice depot a bit early-it is the second time that we have been there in the last week.  I did remind the kids that we were there to work today so no running, riding in shopping carts or anything else that we did on filming day.  
• All of our other buddies were sickly today so it ended up just being the 4 of us.  Our first task again was working on reboxing the bread.  There are some old guys that volunteer there and they seem like they really have a good time and they were there to help tell us what all to do.  After all of the bread was taken care of then we went to work on some rice.
• The kids had really wanted to do the rice but it was really, really hard!  There was about 50 pounds of rice in a tub and we had 3 scoops and 3 funnels that they had to use to get the rice in the little zip lock bags (the same type that we had put stickers on last time we were there)  I had to constantly remind the kids to pour the rice over the bucket, fill the scoop to the top and a host of other things.  
• I think that when we were finished there was more rice in the bags than on the floor-at least I hope!  We did finish the rice in our bucket and I asked about more.  The man said that we could wait on them to bring more or call it an early day.  We had a bit of cleaning up to do (sweeping all that rice up) so I told him we would clean up and then head out.  Now of course when we were walking out, up came the man with more rice-I felt bad but I had already told the kids that we were going so we did go ahead and leave.
• I dropped the rice packers at Nonna's house and I bee-lined to the door to get out of there.  I did ask at least first-I had some Christmas shopping to take care of.  And no, I am not finished yet-seriously, I am a shopping loser.  (And my excuse is last year, I was working some so I would dart into the stores to grab a few things while the kids were at grandparents but this year I am with my beautiful, blessed children all day long, every single day!)
• I hurried back as fast as Walmart would let me out of the doors and then had my crew pick up Nonna's house-this included a major meltdown by my Graham.  I think he is tired from staying up late last night (at least I hope so) but the poor child has quite a few more nights to come in the next week of staying up late-he better get a nap or two in.  
• Then it was Christmas party time at Beebee's place-whoop, whoop.  Santa, candy canes, cookies, live music.  The place was so crowded that they were bringing in chairs for people-Reagan looked at me and said "well, it is a good think that most of the people here have their chairs already."  
• Santa came to see us and my Keaton was so excited-she would put her hands over her big grin every time she saw him.  Then they had this big spread of food (a mix of party foods-meatballs, little smokeys, cookies, nuggets and a few non traditional party foods-chicken legs, chips and egg rolls)  Everyone had a good time and Whitman really enjoyed sitting in Beebee's lap fighting her over her drink-Whitman eventually won and Beebee was pretty lucky that she didn't end up with red punch all over her lap!
• Thankfully, Robby was home when we made it home-not only was he home but he had emptied my dishwasher and folded at least 3 loads of clothes.  My plan was finish all of those chores this afternoon but he had finished them for me so that was a great surprise.  Some napped and some played with new toys and some watched some tv.  Robby joined the tv watching group and he got his first exposure to the Wild Man tv show.  
• All too soon (or about 10 minutes after we should have) we left for church.  The crowd was done tonight but the kids still had a good time and Robby and I caught up on lots of reading during out stent as puppets.  
• Once at home, everyone put on their pajamas and then we pulled our Santas and then it was bedtime.  Keaton did not want to end up in the bonus room tonight so she went right to sleep!