Not To Be Confused With The Greatest Show On Earth

About an hour north of our house is a train ride to the North Pole based on the book Polar Express. This is an event that runs twice a night for almost 2 months and sells out a year in advance. It's the toddler equivalent to Celine Dion.

The kids wear their pajamas (some parents do too). The elves serve cocoa and cookies. They tell the Polar Express story (next time I'll bring a copy to follow along).



Ben was not feeling great, a bit of a head cold. Although, he would've had the same expression even if he were super excited.


The train pulls up to the North Pole and Santa is waving to everyone on his sled with his reindeer. The train goes back and Santa is gone!





While waiting for Santa to come through our train, we sang Christmas carols. David was really enjoying this part.




After some chanting, Santa showed up.


He gives each kid a bell just like in the movie.






On the way back to the depot, Emily learned the art of breathing hard on a window and writing her name.


We had a great time and we'll definitely make this a tradition for the next several years. That night as she was brushing her teeth, Emily told said, "You know that show tonight? It was the greatest show in the whole wide world."

And it was.

Is it so wrong?

I'm like every other stay at home Mom. I'm always tired and my back always hurts. I trained the kids to drive their cars over my back. "Act like Mommy's legs are a race track." It's only semi-effective, but doesn't actual relieve any pain. Plus, they get bored of the race track in about 60 seconds. Emily thought it would be fun to walk on my back the other day. Wow. Now this feels good. 40 pounds of pressure moving up and down my back. I am liking this.

Sometimes she just stands there and I need to remind her to move around. Sometimes, she loses her balance (hence the hockey stick) and drills the ball of her foot in my back. What kids really need is a class to teach barefoot massage. Why not? There is a class for everything else. We might as well teach them a skill they can use forever or at least until middle school. It's a complete win win. Because we all know if Momma aint happy, nobody's happy!

Introducing....

Rachel Edith Allen
Alisa (David's sister) and her husband Daniel just had their first baby. Isn't she just a doll? She was born on Sunday and weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces. I so wish I were in North Carolina so I could hold my beautiful niece.

Gosh...I miss baby smell.

Congratulations!

A New Pack

Emily loves to color. She has crayons, colored pencils and markers which are almost all dried out because she won't put the caps back on and I refuse to do it. When Grammie was here, they sat down at the table to color some Thanksgiving pictures. Grammie was looking for a purple crayon. We have a container that has about 100 crayons, but do you believe not one was purple? Then, I got to really looking at them. The majority of the crayons were blue, green, red and yellow and they said "Olive Garden" or "Red Robin" on the side.

I was at the store the other day and I picked her up a brand new pack of 96 Crayola's with the sharpener built in. I was saving it for Christmas. Today she wanted to color and I couldn't even find the crayon container. I caved. She was so thrilled to see all the colors. I felt like I was depriving her of the joy of knowing colors like vivid tangerine and robin's egg blue.

I imagine she'll live.


Choices, choices, choices...


We all remember the smell of a new box of Crayola's. Emily is just like her Dad and smells everything. It was the first thing she did when she took one out of the box.


I told her how special these new crayons are and that we need to take care of them. I walked in 10 minutes later and steel blue metallic was broken in the pencil sharpener and she tried to put 20 crayons in a box that clearly only holds 16.

Maybe I should've just went to Olive Garden again.

Christmas Program

Last night was Emily's Christmas program for her preschool. As parents, this was our first show! I was so excited. My little baby is on stage for the first time. I almost cried. Emily was one of 8 little candles and she had a small speaking part. She said, "Light me too, so I can see." We rehearsed it for weeks. She spoke her line so well and then when the teacher called the next little candle up, Emily did her line again! It was cute. I didn't capture that on video as I was taking pictures, and David was using our old video camera. I don't know how to upload that onto the computer, actually, I don't think I even can. So, in between taking pictures, I'd do a little digital video on my camera, so I would have something to upload here to my blog. I did this for you Gwynne!

Here's Ben looking rather uninspired by it all. He kept asking when it was his turn. Next year sweetheart.


This is Emily and Alanah, her best friend. They were both candles.


Emily and Alanah.






Santa made a surprise appearance at the end.


I was so proud of my girl. She did a great job. We all had a wonderful time
We capped off the night with Ben peeing on a tree in the parking lot. He's out of diapers except for at bedtime. No more diapers for us! Now, that's a Christmas Miracle.

A Christmas Miracle? Not So Fast...

It happens without fail every time this year. Identity Theft. Let me give you all a glimpse of my hell.

It started almost 5 years ago. I was pregnant with Emily. I got a coupon booklet in the mail for 60 payments of almost $800 each. Hmmm... That's weird. It was actually more than my mortgage. I call them up. I was told so politely that's it was for my new 2004 Toyota Sequoia. Huh? After some research, I found out that a lady with a license with all my info and her picture got a top of the line, decked out, leather seats and all, SUV in my name. She just drove off the lot and sent me the payment booklet.

The nightmare begins...

I'll spare you all the details, but it's been a horrible, horrible experience. She has got me for over $100,000. Now, I'm not out a penny, but I'm out probably over 100 hours of my time making police reports, trying to prove who I am and clearing up my credit. She's walked into every store that I owned a credit card for(Victoria's Secret, Circuit City, Target, etc.) and maxed them out. You can do this with only a driver's license. She's also made checks in my name. She'd write checks to various stores and they'd all bounce. She even found out who I banked with and went in and took over $5,000. I switched banks. She did it again at the new one a year later.

I now have nothing in my name. My credit cards are piggy backed off of David's. I no longer have a bank account. I have a permanent 7 year fraud alert on my credit bureau which means I can't get credit anywhere without them calling my home number first.

This still doesn't stop this woman.

Here's what happened today.

I'm outside with the kids putting up Christmas lights and the UPS guy pulls up. Strange. I'm not expecting anything. He confirms my name and hands me an envelope. I open it and find a check to me in the amount of $5,450 from a very prestigious medical college in Texas. I knew right away it wasn't the Christmas miracle that I was hoping for.

I originally thought she applied for something in my name and maybe it's a payoff of on an account or loan or something. To be honest, I thought about cashing it. Why not, right? After all I've been through, $5,000 at Christmas would more than compensate for my endless headaches. I called my husband who insisted I call the college. Dammit. Why is he so good? I'm thinking take the money. If they ever ask, I give it back. Morals got the better of me and I made the call and even left a message when no one answered.

In the meantime, David called me. He figured it all out. It's a bad check. See, it has their fraudulent account number at the bottom. I deposit it. They can see my account number and who I bank with on the back of the check by tomorrow. Then, she can waltz into the bank and try to get the money out. True, the account isn't in my name, but they would probably do a few online bank transfers like they have in the past and eventually, she'd get the money. She always does.

The lady at the college confirmed it was fraud.

About a month ago, my Dad's checking account got hit for $2900. I had been on that account with him for 10 years and when all this started, I advised him to take my name off. It was a hassle, so he didn't bother. She found his account using my name and transfered the money out. In the end, the hassle found him.

These people are smart. Really smart. If they could use their brains for the greater good, they could probably figure out a way to end hunger, create world peace and fix this economy (without stealing). I'm not even kidding. They figure out everything else.

Of course, I've reported it to the police about a dozen times and I will again today. Nothing ever happens. She's in Texas living in an apartment probably in my name and working at a job in my name as well. According to Social Security I made $900 last year. Funny, I don't get paid and haven't made a penny since 2005.

I've tried to change my social security number, but did you know they are almost out of numbers? They won't switch it for me.

I tell you all of this just to bring awareness. I live each day praying that she will get caught. In the meantime, I sit and wait for the next time she will strike.

Didn't Last Long

This is our dog.

This was our gingerbread house.






No explanation needed.