The company I work for always has a children's Christmas party at the local children's museum.  It's actually a very nice deal... they have a great Santa every year (he has a real beard!) with free Santa photos and Target $5 gift cards for each kid, cookies and punch, and then you get free admission to the museum to play for as long as you want.  Today was the party and we spent a couple of hours there.  Got home around 1 pm, took a couple of sinus advil against the nasty winds that are whipping around today, and then at 4 headed out for the 3rd birthday party in as many weeks for my daughter.  The party was at Pump It Up, which is basically a warehouse with various rooms filled with giant jumper houses and slides.  There were at least 15 kids in the 3 to 9 year old range and at one point I had to break up a throwdown cage death match between 4 kindergartners who were trying to turn the boxing bouncy house into an ultimate streetfighter thunderdome.  Apparently they weren't content with just the giant over-sized boxing gloves and decided to add kicking and bare-knuckles brawling into the mix.  Hubby got to miss out on all the fun as he had another party with his mountain man buddies for their blackpowder group.  What does it tell you that I still feel that I got off easy going to the kindergartner's party intead of that one?   Once we came home from the party, Vayda insisted on making the gingerbread house kit we bought earlier this week so I now have massive amounts of egg white spackle gluing the house to my coffee table.  Hubby still isn't home (hence one of the reasons I feel I made off with the better evening) and I'm just waiting for someone to upload the season finale of Merlin so Connor and I can watch it.

Tomorrow  we have the Santa Train with two other couples and their kids then dinner with them.  We'll have 6 adults and 6 kids between the ages of 1 and 8... I truly have pity for the waitress who gets stuck with our table.  After that we're all going to Ethel M's for free samples and then check out the cactus gardens there that are beautiful and completely covered in lights.   Then Monday we have dentist appointments in the afternoon, Tuesday is parent teacher conferences in the evening,  Friday I volunteer in my son's class at school (and evidently get to help with their Christmas party).  Friday after school we drive to southern California for Christmas with part of hubby's family (his dad's family and his brother and his wife and kids, and maybe one sister).  I fly back home on Sunday while hubby and kids stay for a few more days... I'm hoping to finish up hubby's presents while their gone. Probably the 23rd when they get back we'll go to Opportunity Village for their Christmas display and I'm thinking maybe going down to the Venetian casino to take the kids on a gondola ride on the 24th since it's just us this year with no family coming in to visit us because we're doing all the traveling.  Then we fly out to my family in Tennessee on Christmas afternoon and fly back on New Years day. *THEN* the weekend after that, it's back to San Diego to visit with hubby's mom who will be in from Germany.  And sometime in there I'm supposed to finish up the Christmas shopping. 

I swear, the last time I looked at the calendar it was August. What the hell happened to those other months in there?

Gah!  Just... Gah!