last night, we put up the tree and decorated for Christmas.  the tree puts a smile on my face so that seems like good progress toward getting in the mood.  i’ll post pix once we get things cleaned up a little better (and after i get around to posting thanksgiving pix!).

so i’ve seen this posted on a few blogs and have successfully ignored it. however, last week, reader samster6 emailed it to me. and since her answer to “Who is most likely to respond to this?” was my name, i am sufficiently guilted into posting it. even though she never comments here anymore (how’s that? a little guilt back atchya!).

Okay, here’s what you’re supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy and paste into a new post..Change all the answers so that they apply to you.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?  whichever is appropriate for the shape and size of the gift.
2. Real tree or Artificial?  we always had real trees growing up and i miss that terribly but since we don’t really get a home Christmas, we do artificial.  hubby had a truly pathetic looking tree that we used up until last year when we switched to the lovely one we got on after-Christmas clearance the year before for like $30.
3. When do you put up the tree?  hubby’s been promising to get the Christmas stuff out of storage every day for the last week.  maybe today’s the day.  Christmas boxes are in the house and ready to be worked on tonight!  really, it’s hard to get very Christmassy around here since we aren’t here for the holiday anyhow.  last year we even boycotted gift-exchange between us two.
4. When do you take the tree down?  when we feel like it.  last year, between the move at the end of the year, the trip to orlando right after the new year for disney family Christmas, and granny moore’s death, it was sometime in february before we finally took pix and took everything down. 
5. Do you like eggnog?  i haven’t had it since i was a small child but i recall not caring for it.  my mom and brother were the big egg-noggers in our house.
6. Favorite gift received as a child?  i remember being thrilled to pieces when i got my first cordless phone!  (gee, feel a bit old?)
7. Hardest person to buy for?  i stink at gift ideas.  for the most part, i struggle with everyone.  however, my dad’s wife is definitely the most difficult.  the poor woman’s going to develop a complex since my sissy and i both end up getting her bath and body works smelly stuff every year.
8. Easiest person to buy for?  me!!!  i always know just what i want!  😉
9. Do you have a nativity scene?  you know, i distinctly recall having a very small nativity set in orlando and i searched for it when we moved to our apartment in ga and again the next year when we were in our house in ga.  i assume it got left in one of the boxes that never got moved from my mom’s house, which means that it is long gone in the trash now.  i really should get one this year.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards?  mail.  it’s about the only card-sending occasion that i’m adult enough to follow through with.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?  i think i was raised pretty well to be appreciative of anything i get.  although i do still give my MIL grief for the duck that she gave me a couple years ago.  i get a lot of ducks because that’s the easiest thing for people to get me, no thought required.  she got me a little figure of a baby sitting on a duck commode.  she swears that it was not a hint but i still don’t buy it!
12. Favorite Christmas Movie?  charlie brown
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?  i try to think of and buy gifts year-round but, as stated in #7, i’m terrible at coming up with ideas so it usually ends up being last minute.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?  i tried really hard to give away the coffee set we got from a friend of hubby’s family last year but no one would take it.  we don’t do coffee and don’t feel the need to own a coffee set (although it was nice of her to think of us!).
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?  peanut butter balls!
16. Lights on the tree?  absolutely!  it’s not much of a Christmas tree if it’s all dark (although that’s exactly what we had last year – a dark tree with ornaments all over it – because the box with Christmas lights was apparently still in the storage building in al.  we did buy some after-Christmas clearance lights though for this year).
17. Favorite Christmas song?  i love Christmas hymns!  i’m quite fond of “oh holy night”, “mary’s song”, “god rest ye merry gentlemen”, and so many more.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?  because our families are 500 miles apart, we always do thanksgiving with mine and Christmas with his.  that means that Christmas is in al every year.  when we lived in fl, we never even bothered with a tree or decorations at home because we had no “us” Christmas at all.  it was nice when we moved to ga because it was only a 2.5 hour drive so we did Christmas eve in al and drove home that night so we could have our own Christmas day.  i’m not sure how it’ll work out now that we’re 5 hours away.
19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?  sure but i’m not sure they’ll like them any better than their current names.
20. Angel on the tree top or star?  we have a very pretty star.  i’ve never found an angel tree-topper that i liked.  most of them are covered in gold or look demented.
21. Open presents on Christmas Eve or morning?  since our families are so spread out, gift-opening lasts a while.  we open gifts with my family either a few weeks before Christmas or a few weeks after.  gifts with his family are Christmas eve.  if we exchange with each other, those are opened Christmas day unless we are not home in which case they would be Christmas eve as well. 
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?  it drives me up a frikken wall that the Christmas aisles were up in all the stores back in september!
23. Favorite ornament theme or color?  snowmens!  every year we pick out a new snowman for our tree.  it’s our thing.  also silver balls and red apples (because the first year we put up a tree we didn’t have any ornaments except a couple snowmens and some of my old ducks so we just went to the dollar store and grabbed a couple boxes of whatever).
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner?  cookies!!!  i don’t know that we’ve ever really done a special Christmas dinner.  i guess at his gma’s we usually had ham and turkey but it all depended on what everyone brought.  one year it was just soups and sandwiches.  who knows what this year will be since gma is gone. 
25. What do you want for Christmas this year?  some quality time with hubby.

for the one or two of you who might be curious, this is my side project i’ve been working on lately.  it doesn’t look like much now but i’m hoping to make it a useful and informative site over time.

i was dead asleep this morning.  so dead asleep that by the time the alarm clock finally woke me, it had been going for about four minutes.  i could count on one hand the number of times in my life that i didn’t hear the alarm (not counting times when something happened to make it nearly inaudible).  this morning, i was too deep in a dream to hear it.  and, oh boy, what a dream.  basically, i dreamt that my brother and his wife had three kids and never told us.  i even asked how it was possible that we had never seen her pregnant or seen the kids when we visit them every single time we’re in town.  the explanation i got is that she didn’t show much during her pregnancies and her mom kept the kids a lot.  i was furious.  i yelled at them for hiding our nieces and nephew from us and not wanting us to know them.  they were very matter-of-fact saying they just didn’t think it was a big deal and had never much thought about it when we spent time together.  the dream went on and on and was uber-realistic but that was the gist of it.  i was thoroughly angry at both my brother and his wife when i woke up.  i might have to call her later and make sure they’re not hiding anything from me!

we ran out to fill a prescription for hubby this evening.  although i had set some chicken out earlier for dinner, i had a craving for chick-fil-a and requested a stop there instead of going home to cook.  i generally don’t do such a thing when i’ve already got a dinner plan in action, but they say everything has its reason and i’m a believer in that.  we walked into a near empty restaurant to find a little old woman (LOW) crying at the counter, the lady at the register giving her directions, and a little old man (LOM) standing nervously by.  the LOW started crying harder the more directions were thrown at her and declared that she was just going to call a cab because she couldn’t drive well at night and he (pointing at the LOM) was blind.  she lamented that they had been driving around in circles and she just couldn’t take any more.  hubby and i immediately looked at each other and said we’d drive them.  while i ordered food, hubby went over to the table that LOW was bawling at and offered to drive them if they wouldn’t mind waiting for us to eat.  by the time we were done eating, the LOW had calmed down and stated that she would be able to drive if she could just follow us.  we led them to their condo at the east end of the beach and wished them a very happy vacation.  this nice little old couple had driven all the way from pennsylvania, just to get lost five miles from their destination.  i could totally empathize with the LOW’s frustration and my heart went out to them.  i truly hope that their vacation improves and they don’t get stuck out and about after dark again.  moral of the story:  never question a chick-fil-a hankering. 

no, i haven’t forgotten about family weekend recap and pix.

for those who don’t know, my cousin started training for a marathon and raising funds for lymphoma and leukemia research about the same time that my very good friend was diagnosed with folicular lymphoma.  while he’s been struggling with chemo weakness and sickness, she has been struggling to become a runner!  the weekend before thanksgiving, she ran twenty miles!!!  and he’ll be suffering through his final chemo treatment this friday. 

this has been a tough road for both of them but they are working toward a common goal – kicking cancers’ butt!  i know that finances are a little tight right now for everyone, but please consider donating to this very worthy cause this holiday season.  every dollar counts in the fight against cancer!

i am very blessed.  i know this and i am thankful every day for everything in my life (even when i’m griping about my job).  some of the things that i am especially thankful for today:

• the men and women who fight and put their lives on the line to protect my way of life
• a wonderful and loving husband
• family and friends who i can always count on
• a home that is filled with happiness
• the good health of most of my friends and family
• the mending health of the few others

i hope that you have many wonderful things in your life to be thankful for today as well!

well, not quite yet.  it’ll be this afternoon before they leave orlando.  which means that i got a little lax last night about getting things done.  instead of getting the floors mopped and some dishes prepped for the big feast, i went to bed at 21:00 last night.  believe me when i tell you it was necessary.  i did feel more rested this morning with the exception of a headache that made me not want to get up.  as soon as i’m able (medicine conflict) i’ll take some motrin and, hopefully, knock it out so that i can get things finished this afternoon and be happy and pain-free while greeting guests.  although it seems like it’s going to be a shorter visit than usual, i’m excited about it.  i love having company in my home.  and my sissy’s family is big enough to create flag football teams.  turkey ham bowl ’08 – bring it on!!!

sissy’s family and dad and his wife all arrive wednesday. that means it’s time to stop being lazy and get stuff done. last night we made the big shopping trip. i think we managed to get everything needed for the big feast. this morning, i cleaned both bathrooms (with the exception of my shower since i’ll do that when i shower). the kitchen gets cleaned semi-daily so nothing for me to do there (dishes are hubby’s job and i love that about him!). the guest beds are already made. there’s a bit of laundry left to be folded and put away so i’ll get to that in a few minutes. then all that will be left to get done between now and wednesday afternoon is general picking up, straightening, and floors. i won’t bother with floors until tuesday night. oh, and cleaning the balcony windows/doors. they’re good and salt coated again so they will need a good washing. so, really, even though we’ve been tremendously absorbed in other projects lately, we’re not in too bad shape. yay for that. and getting the bathrooms done was huge. i hate bathrooms because i’m ocd about them and, therefore, spend several hours on them. generally i put them off and then i’m displeased to have to be rushing to get them done. i’m glad that i got them out of the way this morning. that makes everything else seem much, much more manageable. if i go ahead and get the laundry all put away, i might even reward me with a trip to the hot tub. 🙂

i could have sworn that i had ranted about this previously and promised pix but i can’t seem to find it anywhere.  strange.  anyhow, just before we left on our cruise back in september, there was a sand sculpting contest down the beach.  having never personally seen sand sculpting in person, i had to go check it out.  we didn’t stay long because it was bloody hot and sunny but we walked around and enjoyed the artistry.  also somebody didn’t think to bring her camera so we had to use the iphone for pix, which would be why it has taken so long to get the pix to post them.  this also means that we didn’t get as many pix as i generally would have.

this was the big professional sculpture. it was a three-in-one (might have been more after we left). this was the front of it.

surf and turf

this was the side of it.

flowers

this was the back of it.

bar-lobster

this was pretty darn good for an “amateur”. the pic doesn’t do it justice but the arches in the little feet things were impressive.

señor lobster

also not bad for an amateur. heck, everything there was better than i could have done. shame that i don’t have a pic of the big snoopy sculpture. i like snoopy.

lobster king

as promised, here are the few pix we have from the sidewalk painting festival:

i’m not sure what kind of statement this one was trying to make.

zero

this is for one of the local schools.

shark!

this one was pretty cool looking when it was finished but by then both my camera and hubby’s iphone were dead.

in progress

jack and the beanstalk in progress

jack and the beanstalk

this was like the central exhibit. it had a semi-3d feel to it but nothing like the photos that she had of others that she’s done.

white rabbits go away!

this was styled after the fisherman and the siren.

xxx

an archaeological find in the middle of our favorite shopping plaza!

digging up bones

tropical in progress

this was my favorite.

poe

comic

they even had an area for kids to grab some chalk and create their own artwork. there were many, many brightly colored bricks but this is the only one we were able to capture before the iphone died. which is a shame because there was a penguin portrait that i thought was fabulous.

chloe, 4th grade

i added a new spam-blocking plugin to my rants.  if you have problems leaving comments, send me an email to let me know.  jlynn at reflectionsofme dot com.

i know i’ve been pretty neglectful in my rants lately.  i’ve been working pretty hard on another project so until i get that to a presentation point, i’m likely to be fairly quiet here.  we did have a nice weekend.  we spent saturday working on our respective projects.  i took a break to go swimming, hot-tubbing, and sunning.  yesterday we headed to our favorite shopping plaza to check out the sidewalk chalk painting that was going on.  i checked my camera batteries before we left the house, carried the camera all the way down there, took two pix of the first artwork we came up on, and the camera died.  ticked was i.  we then walked to the very back of the plaza to buy some batteries at target and then headed back to the front where all the sidewalk art was.  i took two pix of a chalk painting and my camera died.  yes, i did have a hissy fit but what can you do?  hubby tried to take some pix with his iphone for me but his phone died after a few pix too.  just one of those days i guess.  anyhow, i’ll try to get the few pix we did manage to get gathered and posted in the next day or two.  this morning i woke up feeling lousy so i just don’t much feel like going to all the trouble.

unlike the movies, i didn’t try to run off with the bride or groom.  although, she looked so gorgeous, the thought crossed my mind!  anyhow, lots of pix below the fold… Read the rest of this entry »