Our Christmas tree from this year. It was a combination of a balsam and a fraser fir!  I’d never heard of that before.  My coolest gifts were a Mac Mini and a small 4-cup Cuisinart Food Processor!  The kids are having fun learning how to use the food processor.  Some day I won’t have to work so much and I can have a little more time to play with it.  I’m still working hard on getting my computer set up with my old files and trying to navigate a Mac.

We went to Oshkosh today, to get Sarah home for the weekend.  When we got home, the dog growled at Sarah, for a few seconds, until she realized who Sarah was, and then Jasmine got all lovey-dovey! It was like she’d forgotten.  Whoops.

We had some frost today, but people farther away from Lake Michigan were colder and had a LOT more!  My gaillardia seem unconcerned that winter’s coming and when I looked at them yesterday, they were still blooming strong.  I haven’t looked at them today yet.

This afternoon, we are going to the Bahr Creek yarn store and tonight we are going to see Beauty and the Beast, at the high school.  I think this day’s going to fly by.

It looks like we might get a little sun tomorrow.  I guess I’ll believe it, when I see it.  It’s supposed to snow on Christmas Day.  I hope it’s not so much, that we can’t go to my SIL’s for Christmas, since I have to drive.  Gary has to work.  Newspapers don’t care about holidays.

We still have a few presents to buy.  I got a stomach flu on Thursday and that put us behind a little bit.  I had to leave work early, even.  I just needed to get home.  Fortunately, I feel better now.

Jasmine is glad it isn’t raining.  She was getting sick of having to go potty in the rain.  The first time it was raining so hard, that she ran to the door, twice, before just getting it over with. LOL!

I did go shopping after work tonight, and get one more person knocked off my list.  We are getting there.  A store at 9:30pm, on a Monday night, is a fairly quiet place!

Today, we got up and went to church, then ate lunch and after lunch, I just crashed.  I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon.  Didn’t quite mean to sleep that long, but I was tired.  Oh well, I feel good now.

The tree is up now and looking so pretty in the living room.  We’ll have to take a picture soon.  We had to get some new lights, since one of our strings, that has the 8 different settings, wasn’t all lighting up.  Now, we just have static lights, with a flame tip!  LOL!

I wanted to get some shopping done today.  I don’t know if we’ll get to it yet, or not.  Supper is next on the agenda.

The weather is still warm.  The snow is history.  Emily is still bummed.  It’s about 50/50 whether we will get a white Christmas or not!  The funny thing is, though, we have already had a foot of snow, total!  Weird.

None of us were smoking, yet I could smell cigarette smoke. We were really close to the bar, and 2 people were smoking in there. UGH. I just wish we would enact a smoking ban in restaurants. It surely would make my life better. I hate that I have to threaten my health, with the bad habits of others, since cigarette smoke doesn’t care where it goes. Bleah.

It was a damper on an otherwise fun event. I try to stay away from smoky places, but sometimes it just can’t be avoided.

I found out who my secret pal was, but I still didn’t get to say thank you, because she couldn’t make it to the party. I got a cool gift basket tonight, with 2 hot cocoa packages, a glass snowman ornament, cheese spreaders, a notepad for the fridge, and a mug. They were all Christmas related. I’m taking the Christmas pen to work tomorrow.

My recipient was shocked when she found out it was me. I had managed to keep it a secret for a whole year! She thought I spoiled her enough! It sure was fun!

Emily and I signed up for the secret pal project this next year. Sarah decided to abstain, since she will be away at college in the fall. So, we get to spoil 2 new people!

Then we came to freezing rain on our cars! So, it was a pain to scrape off, but fortunately, the roads weren’t that bad, so we got home safely.

Sarah made apple-spice muffins with the two Fuji apples we had laying around! We kept nibbling on the apple pieces, when she was making them, since Fugi apples are so good! I told her to put green and red sugar on the tops, so they looked Christmasy. She also added cinnamon candies to them, too! Yummy. Too bad we have to wait until morning to eat any of this stuff!

It’s cold out, about 15 F. Brrrr. I suppose I have to take the dog out to go to the bathroom one more time yet, too. Ugh. I got my new LLBean jacket today. I love it, but the zipper needs to get broken in! It’s driving me crazy. Maybe I’ll just wear the old jacket, this time!

I have a clean car, now!  Gary took it to the “good” car wash, where they vacuum and wash the inside windows.  Dogs aren’t good to cars, since they shed and make nose marks all over the windows!  LOL!  (Yeah, you tell Jasmine she can’t come along!)

We got our Christmas lights up yesterday.  Hopefully I have all the settings right, on the timers, so it all comes on automatically and shuts off automatically!

Our day started out sunny, but then became cloudy and it still is now.  I saw the temp at 56!  I don’t think it’s that warm anymore.