No more alarm clocks for WEEKS! Yea!

So, so, so happy to be on break. I don't have to set an alarm clock for several weeks. The next time I set an alarm clock will probably be in New York with my drama kids. I can hardly believe that I do not have to teach again until January 31st. YEA!

Time to get in Christmas mode. I have pretty much been on "Christmas can wait" mode for the past 3 weeks. At least Christmas break came pretty early this year and I have an entire week until Christmas. There are so many exciting things going on. Tomorrow is an exciting day at church. I am doing a Christmas monologue at church tomorrow morning (that I actually still don't really have memorized, but I will work on it today), and Vinny's Sunday school class is performing Christmas songs.  This week my dad is in an interactive show called "Back to Bethlehem" where they recreate Bethlehem the night Jesus was born. He is a tax collector. I'm not sure what night we are going yet, but it is free, so if anyone wants to go with, let me know.  We will probably try to go early so Tiana isn't too cranky.

I also still have a ton of Christmas shopping to get done. I have only got a couple presents each for the kids (although we aren't really going to get them a lot this Christmas, but I do want to get them each a couple more things). I still also need to shop for our families. I rarely ever do Christmas shopping quite this late, but it just was best for me to put Christmas on hold this year, and I managed to get ALL my grades completely done on time with only one night up until 2am, and that was only to get my CSUN final done, so this has been a good thing.

There is so much I want to do with my kids over the next couple weeks too. I want to set up playdates with Vinny and his friends (I confess this is also because I want to hang out with my friends while Vinny is entertained by their children. This works particularly well with Tina, since Logan and Tiana somewhat entertain each other too). I want to take Vinny ice skating, since he has never been before. I want to take Vinny to the see the Muppets movie. I kind of want to take him to the one at the El Capitan where there is a sing a long before the show. It is a bit overpriced, but I've always wanted to do one of those shows with him (we never have because the movies are always 3d and my eyes don't do 3d, but this one is not).

Next week we are going to take the plunge and cancel our cable television. We ordered a Roku on Amazon, which should be here by Wednesday. Then... I am going to drive our cable box down to Time Warner and save $100 a month. Yes... $100 a month. Is that insane or what?  I am very, very nervous about life without television, as I am a little addicted to some of my favorite shows, but from what I understand, we should be able to get our favorite network shows for free with the Roku, and we'll subscribe to Netflix so the kids have plenty of choices. We'll survive. We'll have to. $100 a month goes a long way.