Festive house

Thankfully the dog hasn't eaten the tree yet, but she does like to lay under the tree and chew on her toys. We finally found an adequate artificial tree this year.

Last year we picked up a few strings of LEDs on clearance on Boxing Day and were trying to figure out where to hang them. I thought it might be nice to put some in the kitchen to make it more festive. I think it turned out well. :)

The Decapitation of Lisa Simpson

Last year we got a set of Christmas ornaments of the Simpsons. Each of them is either skating or riding on a sled. I dropped Lisa when I was hanging her on the tree and her head snapped off. I asked Jay if I could just hang her head and he figured that might be a little bit creepy. We will try to glue her back together...

We decorated for Christmas today. Another step in the direction toward feeling ready for the big day. It is less than a month away now. I bought a couple more Christmas presents today which leaves only two more gifts to buy. One for my mom (Jay drew her name in the family draw, and she hasn't given us any ideas yet) and a $10 for our extended family gift exchange on Christmas day. A week ago I would say I was only about half done shopping, so it has been a productive shopping week.

I think our tree looks beautiful. It glows so beautifully with 300 non-LED mini lights. I am all for saving power using LEDs, but I like our mini lights. I always enjoy decorating the tree. Our ornaments are a collection of new and old. I would say that some of my favorites include a pasta angel I made in elementary school, dough ornaments that Jay's mom has gotten us each year since we got engaged, a little sparkly bird that sits on the branch, and new this year, a pickle. Some other Christmas decorations of ours that I really like are my awesome tree skirt that Karen made for us, our nativity scene (last year thoughout the weeks leading up to Christmas the three wisemen travelled around our living room making their way to meet baby Jesus, this year Kiwi would probably eat them so they will just stay with the set), my Mrs. Clause clothes line, and our snow globe we got last year as a house warming gift. Anyone have any special, unique Christmas decorations that they love? This year I also hung up lights along the top of our kitchen cabinets. Our house definitely feels very festive.

This is our first Christmas with Kiwi. She has done surprisingly well with the tree and everything, but I have a feeling it will be a frustrating month and we will be glad to undecorate when the new year rolls around. She ate some blue tinsel stuff that came off of our garland that we wrap around our railing so I imagine she'll be pooping that out by tomorrow :P

Oh and I have to tell you about my great big disappointment. We were planning to bbq home made burgers tonight since it was so nice out today. I usually take out a package of ground beef the night before and we leave it out overnight to thaw then put it in the fridge in the morning. I forgot to take it out until just before bed last night. This morning I put it in the fridge and thought nothing of it until Jay started mincing onion to put in the burgers and I got the package out and saw that it didn't say 'grd beef' on it, it said 'stew beef'. I was SO looking forward to not only Jay's awesome home made burgers, but bbqed....*sigh* We ended up taking out premade frozen hamburger patties and had those instead. They were okay, but not as good as Jay's home made. I guess we are going to have crock pot stew on Monday. And like I just said to Jay, since we don't have leftover burgers from supper I guess we will have to go out for lunch tomorrow after Church....ha.

The Shack

I finished reading The Shack last night. It is a book that I first heard about on Dixie's blog and then my coworker read it so when I saw it in the church library, I picked it up. It was a very intriguing book. I think I would like to read it again to take in more of the details and think about it some more. It really gave me a new perspective on God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I know that it is not scripture, it is just one guy's book and point of view. There were a few theological things that I wasn't totally feeling were completely accurate. I am not an expert in theology by any means, but it did really get me thinking. I was almost thinking of buying that book for my mom for a birthday or Christmas present. She is always looking for things to read and I thought it might be interesting to her. We'll see. It was a very thought provoking book to me and I can't seem to get it off my mind right now. I am glad I finished reading it at home last night and not at work because the last couple of chapters really had me crying.

Meteor from last night

I heard on the news this morning about a meteor that fell last night and it sounded like it was quite impressive. I looked up on youtube and was able to find this video from Edmonton. CRAZY! I would have loved to see that.

Overall, it's been a great day

It has been a great Saturday. Flyball with Kiwi was fun. I even made her a new tug toy by cutting up one of her $1 Dollarama dog blankets and braiding three strips together. She seems to really like it. Then grocery shopping was good, I enjoy grocery shopping. Hung out for a while at home then gave Jay a massage.

Most people probably assume that since I am a registered massage therapist that my husband gets massages all the time. Well I am ashamed to admit that he doesn't. He gets 5 or 10 minutes when I can find the time and/or strength. Today I gave him almost a whole hour and I think he appreciated it. That's what he told me afterwards anyway.

On to making supper. We roasted a whole chicken which we had never done before. We have bbqed a whole chicken (mmm beer can chicken) but never roasted one. It was so juicy and tender and we had it with some stir fried veggies and jasmine rice (a new favorite type of rice, love it!) and finished up with a piece of apple pie we got at the grocery store today.

After supper I watched a couple of episodes of The Office. I have been sucked into watching. In the last week I have watched the first two seasons in their entirety and let me be the first to admit that my heart melted just a little bit when Jim and Pam kissed in the season finale of season two. It has been quite some time since a tv show has made me laugh like that show does. I love the way it is filmed (documentary style) it's just so unique. I think that Michael and Dwight are hilarious and have been enjoying the fun times that Jim and Pam have had pulling pranks on Dwight. I am interested to see what seasons 3 and 4 will bring. I imagine within the next week I will be done the whole first 4 seasons and will have to wait from week to week to see the wacky adventures of those at Dundin Miffler. Great show!

Then I decided after buying a Christmas tree a few days ago that I would try to set it up downstairs just to make sure all the lights work and maybe work on fluffing and shaping it then just move it upstairs in a few weeks when it's time to have a tree set up. Well I set it up and you would not believe that a section of lights was burned out. I tried ever plug in and could not get this one section to work. GRRRR! The same thing happened last year when I bought a prelit Christmas tree except this one only weighs about 20 or 30lbs and the one last year was 75-100lbs and was a REAL hassle to get home and then to return. I have come to the conclusion that we are not going to EVER have a prelit tree. What are the chances that would happen to us two years in a row!? Maybe we should just get a real tree again. It wasn't so bad, we would just have to wait until later in December so it doesn't dry out like it did last year. We will see. I saw a decent looking tree at Costco last time we were there, with absolutely NO lights on it.

After that Jay and I played Wii tennis and had some night snack apple pie (I am surprised we are not chubbier than we are). Oh yeah, and somewhere in there we picked out a picture for our Christmas card this year. I am going to order them from Costco and hopefully Jay can pick them up when he is out there on Tuesday. The day is drawing to a close and I am getting sleepy, very sleepy..... Nite nite.

My Rememberance Day

I spent the last day of my 4 day weekend being very productive. Firstly, I slept in. Mmm it felt very nice to sleep in :) Then we got up and shortly after that we headed to Walmart. We knew that it would be a zoo there, but I had decided that I might like to hang some outdoor Christmas lights this year so we went there looking for a couple of grocery items for our potluck tomorrow evening and some Christmas lights, hooks and a ladder. We managed to find all of those things at Walmart plus we found a Christmas tree (we had quite the time last year trying to find a passable artificial tree).

I was very close today to deciding to NEVER shop at Walmart again, but it just too darn convenient and cheap. Today there were a number of lengthy lineups at the tills so I picked the shortest looking one and stood in it. Keep in mind I had a cart with a Christmas tree box in it, as well as numerous other boxes of lights and whatnot, as well as a six foot step ladder. We were standing in line when this manager type (one of the ones with a red vest instead of the blue ones...not sure what that denotes) came over and kindly told us that till one was open and that we should go down there. As soon as I managed to pick up my ladder with one hand push my cart with the other out of the way, I noticed that she put the closed sign up on the till where I was standing. We made our way down to lane one (we were standing in lane 10 or 12 originally) only to find a line that was as long, or possibly longer than the line we had been in at the last till. That really ticked me off. I thought she was sending us down there to a newly opened till. And she didn't offer to give me a hand with my obviously cumbersome load of stuff. I was plenty annoyed but we did finally make it through the till and paid and were on our way.

I know that there is a labour shortage in the city, but most times when we grocery shop at Extra Foods they take one look at me, then at Jason and ask if we need help taking our groceries out. Every time they ask I say, "No, we're fine." because I have a cart so I am able to manage and whatever doesn't fit in the cart can sit on Jason's knee. Well at Walmart Jay couldn't really carry the ladder, so I awkwardly propped it on top of the Christmas tree box and hoped that no one got in my way!

After that schmaz we came home and I proceeded to spend the next couple of hours hanging Christmas lights. With the little plastic clips it is super easy, however I would say that attatching the clips to the strings of lights was the most time consuming and frustrating part of the whole thing. Each time I attatched one it pinched my thumb, so after 245 clips my thumb is a little sore. However for about the last 70 or so I put on a glove so it would pinch the glove and not my finger. We bought 6 strings of 35 lights (12 feet long each) and thought that might be enough. I knew by the time I was on the second last string that we would need at least one more. So after swearing off Walmart I had to go back for one more string of lights and one more box of clips. I wondered if the last string would make it the remainder of the way across the garage, but as I hung the last string the last bulb stretched perfectly to the far corner of the garage! Sweet!

The lights that we chose to hang up are green LEDs. I am not the hugest fan of LEDs but I have always liked the green and red ones the best. I have seen a lot of houses with LEDs hung outside and they look quite sloppy like the cords are all tangled up but the people just hung up the lights anyway. I hoped that ours would turn out looking okay. The clips that we bought attatch to each bulb, so our lights are perfectly straight across the eavestroughs and I think they look very nice. I think the messy lights look silly.

Also in there Jay made meatballs for our potluck tomorrow and I cooked them and washed up all the dishes. *sigh* It has been a busy day and I don't think I will feel guilty about sitting and playing some Super Mario Galaxy this evening (I rented it for the Wii yesterday and so far it's quite fun!)

Did I go to the dentist or the day spa today?

I got a letter in the mail a few months ago saying that my dentist was retiring. I figured since he was retiring and I feel no real connection to that office that I would try out the new dentist office over by us. After Jay gave it a pretty good report earlier this fall when he went I decided I should book myself an appointment. I went today for a cleaning and checkup. When I got called in I sat down in the chair and the chair started to massage my back. It wasn't a great massage, but a massage nonetheless. Before she started cleaning my teeth, the hygienist asked if I would be interested in a complementary paraffin hand treatment while she cleaned my teeth. I said, sure thing! So I got to dip my hands in paraffin wax and she wrapped them up in plastic bags, then in mittens so they stayed warm and the wax softened my hands while my teeth were being cleaned. Then to top it all off there was a tv on the ceiling and I got to watch what I wanted with headphones on. It just happened to be Oprah and she had Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman on promoting their new movie Australia which I would like to see. It comes out later this month! The report from the dentist was that I have very good teeth, no cavities but that my gums are a little inflamed and that I should floss more regularily. I think the denist I saw was maybe a few years older than me and female. It's strange, I have always had the same dentist my whole life and he was an older man. I think I will appreciate having a young female dentist.

So Tired

I have found it especially hard to wake up in the mornings lately. This tends to happen to me every year at this time. The days are getting shorter and shorter and even though I am lucky enough to get to sleep in until 8am most days, it is still dark out now at 8am. You would think this transition from fall to winter would get easier after nearly 28 years of life in Saskatchewan. I am dreading the first real snowfall and learning to drive all over again. I am also dreading the fact that we still have another month and a half of days getting shorter before they start getting longer again. Why do I live in Saskatchewan?? I like it here, don't get me wrong. It just seems to get harder each year to get through winter. I think that is why most people start taking warm winter holidays when they get older. I think they are on to something there. Anyone wanna hop a plane to Florida, Hawaii, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, etc. with me??