Holiday Visitors

It was an interesting and eventful weekend.

Dawn and Jake decided to come and visit, so they took off Friday evening and made it to Watertown. Then their car died. So, we went on a quick Saturday trip to meet up with them there and they came back here for the night.

Mila, begging as usual.

Then we decided to make a sort of Christmas lunch on Sunday before they left. Well, the turkey was in the oven, and the oven decided to die halfway through. I wasn't thinking right and tossed it into the garbage. If I had been thinking, I would have finished cooking it in the slow cooker and had it for dinner. Anyway, we had rotisserie chicken instead. On the plus side, our oven was fixed within a couple days.

We didn't think anyone other than ourselves would see our Christmas decorations, but they and Dan's friend, Jerry--three whole people--have seen them. Jerry was here early last week.

Probably checking up on football stuff...

I'm getting pretty anxious for Christmas. Tomorrow night, we are planning on having our own little Christmas with dinner, presents and hot chocolate. I'm excited for the critters to open their presents (well, I doubt they will be doing the opening). Then we'll leave Friday night and spend Saturday with Dan's family. We will spend Christmas Eve, Day and the next morning with my family.

I can hardly wait!

Christmas Came Early

I suppose I should elaborate.

If you can't tell from our last post, we're engaged as of last weekend!! Now the planning starts....

We haven't decided when, where or any of the other details yet. The wedding will likely be anywhere from summer to fall 2012. Why wait any longer than that? It seems like it would be too hard to make any concrete plans until we get closer to the day, anyway.

We have a few ideas in mind, but I don't want to say anything until we've discussed them with our families first.

About the ring. Apparently, Dan bought it on our way back home after Thanksgiving when we stopped at the mall. Best Christmas present ever. He picked it out all by himself, too. He hid it for two weeks until he couldn't keep it a secret any longer. Even though I didn't mean to keep dropping him hints before then, he took my subtle wedding references as just that.

I was so surprised when he asked that I almost forgot to say, "yes."

I got to work the following Monday only to find out that the girl I work with got engaged that weekend, too. And no, it wasn't planned that way.... :)

A Ring

"Will you marry me?"

"For real? Okay. I mean, yes."

Dreaming of a White Christmas

You might notice that the second song on our Christmas playlist is "White Christmas." I'm dreaming of a white Christmas....

Looks like it's gonna be a brown one, though.

The Typical Christmas Busyness

It's hard to find time to write a post when I have a zillion other things to do...although this is what I would rather be doing. Busy, busy. Christmas is coming quickly, so I've been busy trying to get everything done in time.

Last week was rather unproductive. I started getting a dry throat Monday night, which is usually the first sign I'm getting sick. I started popping vitamins, drinking tea, inhaling steam and so on... Thankfully, it didn't last long. I was exhausted for the next couple days and slept most of the evenings. It was a matter of days and I almost felt back to normal. Dan was able to keep from catching my cold.

This weekend was much more productive, although I kind of stressed myself out by taking on all kinds of projects. I went shopping, so I had Christmas cards to write out, presents to wrap, baking to do....

I'll definitely keep busy up until Christmas.

I'm not much of a baker, but I did make rice krispie bars--one of Dan's favorite treats--and I just baked some cookies tonight. I still have lots of plans for the next few weeks, but baking takes up a lot of time and, like I said, it isn't really my thing.

Christmas Tree Rice Krispies

We wanted the rice krispies to look Christmasy, so we pulled out last year's green sprinkles and, using a template I cut out from copy paper, stenciled green Christmas trees onto the treats. Fancy, I know. :s

But, finally, it kind of feels like the holidays here. For a little while. You know that snow we got a few weeks ago? Well, that melted ages ago and it has been really depressing to look outside--several days into the month of December--and see brown all around.

It snowed a little bit last night, but its lifespan isn't looking hopeful....