Winter is just...

...nasty.

...cold.

...LONG.

...just barely starting and I am already tired of it.  Look what I had to deal with today:

Can you believe it?  Ugh.

So.  To cheer us all up, I decided to treat you to a pictorial of my Christmas decorations.  I LOVE Christmas.  Despite the fact that it is in the winter, Christmas is still my absolute, hands-down FAVORITE holiday.  Not because of the presents, although, I would be a liarliarpantsonfire if I said I didn't like getting presents, but because everyone seems so much nicer to people during this time.  Annnnddddd...I love the decorations. :)

 This is my tree.

 This was my very first ornament.  I believe my Nana made it for me when I was born. :)

 My dad made this ornament for my first Christmas.  It's the partridge in a pear tree.  Sadly, no more followed.  I think it must have been my brother's fault.  ;)

 My Nana made this one, too.

 One of miss raven's first ornaments.

 This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. :)

As an interesting side note, my BFF has one JUST LIKE IT.  :)

 I think this was ornament number three or four.  We used to get special ornaments just for us every year.

The angel on the top of my tree.  I love my angel.  She was a cheapy from K-mart.

 I have a thing for snowmen...in case you couldn't tell.

 Can't take the credit for this wreath...my dad made it for me several years ago. :)

Santa door hanging-thing.  

Hehehe...my best Christmas present ever. :)

Tomorrow may or may not be the last day of school before the break.  It will depend on what happens with the weather.  Either way, I won't know until the morning, so I can't sleep in.  As much as I would love to start my vacation a day early, I really don't want the kids to miss out on their parties.  Especially since we would have to do them when we came back from break and NO ONE wants that!

Time to decide if having ice cream is worth it or not tonight.

Toodles! :)

I'm still here...

You know how it gets around this time of the year, though....crazy busy doesn't even begin to describe it!

I took a much needed day off today.  No, I didn't go anywhere.  Well, nowhere except my kitchen.  I think I baked about a bazillion and one Christmas cookies today.  I still have about a gazillion and one more to go.  So far today I have baked eight dozen chocolate chip cookies, six dozen oatmeal/cranberry cookies, and two dozen brownies.  I have made enough Snickerdoodle dough for eight dozen snickerdoodles and enough butter cookie dough for roughly one hundred gobzillion butter cookies.  I still have another pan of brownies to bake and two pans of pumpkin bars.  I think the pumpkin bars will wait for tomorrow.  I have a new recipie that I want to try and I don't have the gumption to do it tonight.  If I find said gumption, I may also try a recipie I found for a version of Starbucks Cranberry Bliss bars.  It looks semi-easy and I do love those bars a great deal.  So...we'll see.

Right now, as you can see, I am taking a break.  It is beyond freaking cold here and my feet feel like ice cubes.  Sadly, I am afraid they will feel this way until, I don't know, April or May I guess.  Sigh.

Funny story:

I go out to get the mail today.  In the mail I find one of those little sample box things.  I think to myself  "Hmmm....I don't remember signing up for a free sample of anything.  I wonder what it could be."  I come inside, putter around the kitchen and decide to check out the mail.  Much to my surprise and delight, it was a wee little box of tissues from Kleenex.  Apparently, my brother decided to send me a wee little box of tissues to help make up for the three ginormous ones that I went through during my recent cold (that I am still not completely over much to my dismay).  I got a good laugh out of that.

Ok.  I guess it was only a funny story to me.  Sorry.

Off to bake more cookies!

:)

Can you believe...

that it is almost Christmas?  Yeah, me either.

I am thrilled, though, because not only is Christmas vacation a less than TWO weeks away, I decided to take this Friday off!  Whoo-hoo for the personal day! :)

I don't know what your weather is like but it is crazy cold here.  I understand that it could be much worse.  I could live in Alaska.  I don't, though, and I hate being cold.  I don't think that I have mentioned that before.

Ahem.

Things are crazy at work but that is normal for this time of the year.  The kids are frantic for the break and they don't seem to understand that we are, too.  Maybe even more so.

Is your Christmas shopping done?  Mine isn't.  And it probably won't be until December 23ish or so.  I'm such a slacker.

Speaking of slacking...I think I am going to go play games on Facebook.

toodle-do! :)

wordless wednesday...

Do you think...

that my life is nothing but a bit of randomness?

Hmmm.  Yeah, I can see why you would.

:)

My posts have been nothing if not random, lately.  You would have thought that I would have blogged more on my recent week off of school, but alas, I did not.  In my defense I was sick for all of my vacation.  I still am sick but not as bad as this time last week.  I have the annoying part of the cold now.  You know, the snotty, runny nose.  I have gone through almost three full boxes of Kleenex and let me tell you something...tissues with lotion are ALWAYS the way to go in cases like these.  Don't let those other tissues fool you.  They are like sandpaper.

Anywho.

How was your Thanksgiving?  Despite my original thoughts way back in August, my Thanksgiving turned out to be very nice.  For the last several many years I have spent Thanksgiving with my "other" family...my BFF's family in Ohio.  Well, as we ALL know, she had to go and move.  I know, rude, right?  Well, that meant that I couldn't spend the holiday with them.  I thought I was going to have to spend the holiday by myself but to my surprise, my aunt from up north invited me to spend Thanksgiving with her, her daughter, and her BFF.  Of course I agreed.

miss raven and I made the drive up on Thanksgiving morning.  The traffic was nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be and we made pretty good time.  My aunt has four cats.  miss raven is not a fan of cats.  I was a little worried.  Not to fear.  miss raven occupied the spare room and the cats went about their normal business.  We had the whole shebang for dinner:  turkey, homemade mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, rolls, and sweet potato pie.  Mmmmmmm!  I proud to say that, although I did eat two rolls and two helpings of stuffing, I didn't stuff myself to sickness.  Yea me!

We watched much football and NO I don't want to talk about it.  At all.  Period.

We came home on Friday.  I did not go Black Friday shopping this year.  At first I was a little disappointed about that but now, not so much.  The deals that I normally got weren't the same this year so I don't feel like I missed out on anything.  On Saturday we put up the Christmas tree.  It looks SO good.  You know, in MY house.  I love it!  I am slowly replacing the old lights with the new LED lights and boy, does it make a difference.  The lights at the top of my tree are the LED ones and they are SO much brighter.  I really like them.  I am hoping that, after the holiday, I will be able to find some on clearance so I can get enough for next year that I don't have to use the other ones at all.  Currently I have six strands of lights on the tree.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Six.  What can I say?  I love lights.

Speaking of Christmas, and, weren't we?  I only have 13 more days until break!  I am taking next Friday off so that I can bake.  Remember my cookie list?  It will take me the WHOLE weekend to get that done.  I am thinking that I am going to have drop something off of there, though.  I am thinking about picking up pretzel bark to compensate for any cookie that I may have to drop off.  It is easy to make and doesn't take much time.  We'll see.

I hope that your Monday was fantastic and that your Tuesday is even better!

One of these things is not like the other...

One of these things doesn't belong.

Can you guess which one is not like the others?

By the time I finish this post?

:)

Oh Vacation...

how I LOVE thee!!!

And I would love thee even more if I wasn't sick! :(  I woke up Friday morning with a cold.  Can I tell you how much that sucks?  I mean, seriously.  It started out as a head cold and now has moved into my chest.  Lucky me.

On the bright side, I *am* on vacation and I *am* getting plenty of rest, which I apparently need.  The time at home has been so nice and miss raven is enjoying it, too.  Every once in a while she will get up from her nap to look at me.  She has the "oh, you really are still here" look on her face and then she will sleepily wag her tail.  It is so cute. :)

Also on the bright side, the weather here has been pretty nice lately.  I know it won't last so I am trying to enjoy it is as much as I possibly can.  I actually had to sleep with the fan on last night because it was a little stuffy in my room.

Thursday is Thanksgiving and I am really looking forward to it; more than I thought I would be this year.  I am not spending the holiday with my BFF and her family, which sucks bigtime, but I do have other plans which I am really looking forward to. :)

The other nice thing about vacation is that I can nap whenever I want.  That would include right now.

;)