spoken for

The last week of the year was a forced week off for Steve from work. During that week he was informed that due to lack of work, out of the first 8 weeks of the year, everyone was required to take off 4 of those weeks. None of those weeks were paid. He worked the first week of the year then was off last week. On Friday, he was informed he was laid off completely.

I have varying feelings ranging from “we’ll be just fine” to the staring into space “oh. my. gosh. What are we going to do?”
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So we borrowed The New Super Mario Bros from my brother-in-law and while it’s totally fun, it’s a bit hard for E. He has been picking it up little by little but I see how it’s hard for him having never played the original Mario Bros. For instance, at first he expected the Wii remote to guide his little dude completely. It’s really like a flashback to when we first got an NES when I was little. I remember my mom doing huge arm motions when trying to jump Mario over something. But apparently once we train our brains to know that it’s just our fingers doing the walking, Nintendo has to come out with something like the Wii. :P

So, anyway. E is pretty competitive and he tends to get upset when he loses. It’s something we’re working on, really, but in the meantime, sometimes I just want him to win so he’ll be quieter. He now has full reign of the game with Worlds 1 through 8 unlocked and all but two levels beaten on the first 7 Worlds. Of course, every time his lives run out, his inventory is cleared and the mushroom houses reset themselves. So he heads there first.

The red mushroom houses have a little mini matching game. Does it make me a bad mother that I look up the cheats and tell him which boxes to pick so that he wins all the stuff and doesn’t hear the bad guy laughing at him? At least then he does the victory dance and that’s just way beyond cute. :P

This game was totally designed with me in mind, though, I know it. I am just not coordinated enough to play the truly 3D games out there!

I wanted to make this a tradition for us, but we skipped last year because we were sick and I just wasn’t feeling up to anything until… um… now? :) But we did a gingerbread house in 2007 and this year Elijah and I did the gingerbread train I had bought for last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe one of these days I will bake my own gingerbread.

This thing was so hard to do! Heh! I don’t know if they’re always like this or because it’s a year old, but the green icing meant to be the “glue” for parts was so thick! The directions said it would be toothpaste-like, but it was more like play doh! I finally got it put together though, and Elijah added the candy where he wanted. Silly kid always wants it to look just like it is on the box, so he put candy in a lot of the same places (some even using the same colors!) but of course, the one on the box is probably actually plastic, so it’s near impossible!

It was fun, though, and we will hopefully continue to make this a yearly thing. Elijah loves putting these together and he can’t wait to eat it. The thought of eating it really grosses me out, though it does smell good, but for his sake I’ll make sure I keep any dust from gathering on it HAHAHA
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