December 11 ~ I scream, you scream, we all scream for

ICE CREAM! Man, we love our ice cream in this House! We even love it in the winter. Never mind that it doesn't feel like winter here today. It feels like spring with rain and tornadoes. (Or "tomatoes" if you're 4 years old.) I don't think our county had any tomatoes, but a couple of nearby ones did. Maybe we had an isolated tomato in our yard. The gazebo that was screwed into our back deck was lifted up and tossed into the yard next door. Thank God it didn't injure any people or property. Thank God it didn't fly in any direction other than the way it went. It used to sit right up against 3 very large windows. Less than a foot of space was between the windows and the gazebo. That thing has weathered many storms and never even shaken back and forth, so I don't know what ripped it from its screws (2 on each corner!) and tossed it off the deck. All the furniture that was out there was also rearranged. This all happened at 5:45, in the dark, in the rain, just as we were getting home from dance class. We were supposed to rush in, eat some stew, change Alec into his chorus outfit, and rush out the door to his Christmas concert at school. Which was lovely, BTW. I ended up out in the rain in the dark dragging the gazebo out of the next yard, back over beside our deck, and strapping it as tightly as I could to keep it from blowing away again. And it was not light! It's still tethered to the deck, though, so all is well. I had a bunch of big, balloon-like Christmas lights on that gazebo. I doubt they all survived. Anyway, the whole point of this post....

One thing that always makes it onto our calendar is going out for doughnuts and hot chocolate or for ice cream. Some years we do both. Usually we get something Christmas-y, like peppermint milkshakes or doughnuts with red and green sprinkles. But today the kids voted to go to Sonic to get Blasts. They didn't have a candy cane flavor or egg nog flavor or anything else that was Christmas-y, so we just got our usual flavors. Yes, we have a "usual" Blast order at Sonic. We love Sonic Blasts. They are really good, really large, and really fun to eat in the rain. LOL It's a good thing they are so big because due to the gazebo fiasco, we did not have time to eat dinner before the concert (which was lovely, BTW) so we didn't eat until we got home at 8:00. By then Landon was passed out, and Haley was sick (she didn't even finish her Blast at Sonic, so I know she's not faking it to get a long weekend off from school!), and Erin was starting to get nauseous. Wait, I thought we had finally escaped the curse of the Christmas Stomach Flu. It is a Christmas tradition we have been trying to get rid of for 10 years now. Last year was the first year nobody got sick.

Did I mention that the concert was lovely? Well, it was.