Christmas Shopping

Do people really want to know that we went Christmas shopping today? Janese and I start our Christmas shopping very early. Last year we were done in October. The mall and surrounding stores are so insane during the holiday season that we try and knock it out as fast as we can. We went out and shopped for a couple of hours. We will have all of the kids this year for Christmas morning, so that means we do all of the shopping. The amount of presents around the tree on Christmas morning is amazing. I am sure the garbage man hates us on that first pick up day after Christmas.

Today we had our site survey for all of the new equipment that is going to be installed in our home. The installer, Chris, gave us several suggestions and one of them was to remove part of Janese's Woodley's entertainment center. She wasn't too thrilled about that. She had it custom made during her first marriage. It is made out of maple, I think and it really big. Chris was concerned that we will get the new TV installed on the wall and it will look as if we are watching it from inside a box. I guess we will have to wait and see what they say on the 12th. Hopefully we can come to some type of compromise.

This has been an off week from having eight kids. We have my four every other week. I remember when I used to think that having four kids was a lot. My four come home tomorrow night. They go back and forth every Sunday night. Hopefully it is not too hard on them. It has to be difficult constantly changing houses. They are troopers. I know the Gillam four are always anxious for them to come home. On Sunday afternoon they usually start asking when the kids are coming home. The moment the kids are here they all shoot off to different parts of the house and start playing immediately. Half of the time I barely get a hug from them before they are busy playing with each other.

This week they are going to stay until Monday, the 12th. The 12th is when we are having the entertainment equipment installed and they will have someone here to teach us how to use everything. It will be HD school. Janese keeps teasing me about how excited I must feel with all of the new users manuals I will have to read. The picture about is what I took and submitted that helped us win the contest. If Janese knew I put this on the web she would kill me.