A playground, a carwash, and Christmas tree dismantling

Sarah had basketball practice this morning, so while she was there I took the other 4 kids and we went to a local playground for some fun and energy-burning in this wonderful too-warm-for-December weather.

Gotta' love going down those plastic slides with long hair!

Wonder what the weight limit is on these....

This has disaster written all over it...

After practice, we headed back into town so that Sarah could get ready to go to a friend's house for the night. We took her over there and then ran through the carwash - when I went to my friends' house on Christmas Day, I made the mistake of taking the "wrong" dirt road to get there and ended up 4-wheeling through some massive mud holes. I figured it was time to de-mud the van. The kids love going through these stupid carwashes.

We went over to The Dude's house for a while and helped him to get some projects done around there, and came home with a few projects to work on for his mother, including repairing a headless angel and hemming some curtains. I love those kind of projects! The angel's head has been reattached, and I was going to work on the curtains tonight, but I don't think that's going to happen.

There was an amazing sunset from my front yard...

Then we started the dismantling of the kindling tree in the living room. That thing was crispy! And there was still water in the tree stand, so it's not like I let it dry out....

HELP! I've been attacked by lights!

That is one dead tree...

All gone...

The tree is out by the curb, waiting for the city to come and pick it up and take it away next week to turn it into mulch with all of the other dead trees. I still have to take down the outside lights and the garland and stuff inside, but that can wait for a day or two. It'll all get done. But the worst of it is done and over with at this point.

Tomorrow we get to get up early so that I can get the older 3 to their father's house by 9:00am, and then it's just Alex and Daniel and me for the day. Alex may or may not be going to his father's house - still don't have definite word on that because I'm always the last one to know.

I think we're all fighting some kind of stomach bug - Sarah got sick at basketball practice this morning and we were initially blaming the donuts that she inhaled on the way there. But Alex had a couple of accidents today, Daniel had some diarrhea issues, and now my stomach is starting to feel kind of icky. Hopefully whatever it is will go away tomorrow because I have a 5K to do on Sunday...

Holy crap. I just realized that tomorrow is New Years Eve. Where has this year gone?

But for now, I think I'm going to ignore the massive pile of laundry on the futon and I'm going to curl up on the couch and crash for a few hours before I get to get up and do it all over again.