Christmas, Part I. And stuff.

The older 4 kids have been gone for a couple of days, so it was just me and Daniel for calendar-Christmas. He and I went to church last night...but not before he fell asleep on the floor after his bath. I got him back up and took him to church, where he proceeded to sleep through about 95% of the service.

I made special arrangements with Santa this year. He stopped by last night and dropped off just a couple of small presents for Daniel to open this morning, and then he's coming back tonight to bring EVERYTHING and to fill the stockings so that when all of the kids come home tomorrow, we can have our family Christmas.

Then Daniel and I went out to a friend's house and hung out with her for the afternoon. It was just a totally relaxed, laid-back day......but it's cold outside!

Along with being incredibly cold outside, it's almost as cold in my laundry room. From what I can tell, it used to be a porch and someone just slapped some drywall on the inside and some siding on the outside and called it a laundry room - but neglected to put insulation in the walls. It gets bitter cold in there in the wintertime, to the point that it is almost unbearable to walk across the floor without shoes on - which for me is horrible, since I hate to wear shoes.

Out of curiosity tonight, I grabbed the only thermometer that I have and I put it on the floor in there for a few minutes.

Yeah. It's that cold in there.

Next project? Adding to the bottom of the curtain across the laundry room doorway to keep that cold air from pouring across the kitchen floor. That might even be done tonight. Like, in the next hour.

At the moment, however, I'm waiting for The Dude to come back over. He got here a bit ago - on foot - because his truck died a few blocks away from my house. So he took my van to go back and try to figure out what's going on with it and to see if he can at least get it parked somewhere safe if he can't move it. Then we are getting up early early early in the morning to finish shopping for the kids before they get back home.

Sleep is definitely overrated at this point.