Tropical Picnic

Girl-child suggested we have PBJ sandwiches beside the fish today for lunch.*
It was lovely.
A fun lunch the day before she's off to Chile for a few weeks.
She always makes her mark too.

*Back in the day when I was the mother of a three year old and a baby I used to go to the Walker Sculpture Garden to have a picnic lunch beside Frank Gehry's fish.

Snow

The latest snow was heavy; back-breakingly so. Luckily, Boy-child is good at shoveling:
Girl-child, in the meantime, started a snowman. She creates.
He likes to un-do:
The results are a clean sidewalk and a snowman:
Life is good.

Merry, Merry

I hope everyone had a good day today. I don't know how I forgot, but I have no snow photos. We got about 7 or 8 inches last night, more to come tonight. I'll try to remember to snap a few shots tomorrow.

Here's the tree this afternoon:
The kids getting along as always.
Note the ridiculous robot at the top.

Sorry girls, I never did get used to it.
Having fun with new (vintage) toys.
And looking forward to watching movies received.
We got good puzzles too, and books and pears...countless wonderful things.

Here are some angels - a kindergarten photo turned me into an angel, a felt covered cone with styrofoam head made when I was ? and other assorted celestial beings:
The snow storm provides quite the contrast from last year in Chile.

Oh The Weather Outside is ....

Wonderful!

We are due for 12-16 inches of snow over the next few days - I hope they're right!

Here's a vintage ornament - from my childhood...I was the only girl so there was a lot of pink:
This is either Toot or Puddle, I'm not sure which. We loved the books, especially the one in which one of them goes off on a trip and sends the other one postcards from around the world:
A glass angel and a cat ornament that looks just like our cat, Mozart. Suzie, who is currently taking care of Mozart as Girl-child is leaving soon for Chile and Boy-child is allergic, gave Mozart the ornament several years ago:
A very girly ornament that I received when I was too old for such, but it was made in Spain which I find endearing:

Where is Everybody?

Where are my friends? No one is blogging.* I wonder why?

Oh, right, it's Christmas this week.

I've had my own issues as the holiday bears down on me.

Disasters:

The top third of the tree has no lights. While trying to figure out the problem in order to fix it, I almost tipped the whole $#@&* thing over this afternoon.

The first round of oatmeal shortbread cookies could not be eaten by anyone with any type of dental work because the sprinkles used were new and very hard. Tooth-breakingly hard.

The first round of date balls were a catastophe. Not sure what happened but I'm blaming it on the dates.

I have not knit a single stitch today.

Boy-child is sick. Again.

Positives:

I made (microwave) fudge for the first time ever and it is, if I may say so myself, quite good.

The second round of date balls turned out. They are delicious, as always. (Auntie's recipe is THE BEST).

The children were happy with the first round of oatmeal shortbreads; every one of them has been eaten and a second batch made.

Girl-child is home. This is a very good thing because she keeps me from going over the edge (and throwing out the tree).

I am not doing any Christmas knitting; thank the gods.

To do:

Wrapping. All of it.

One more batch of spritz cookies.

Cleaning. Notice this is at the bottom of the list.

*My apologies to The Kat, who (pointed out in comments that she) has been blogging regularly (the only one). I forgot to mention her in my frenzy last night. Be sure to check out her links, especially the one to The Cat's House.

On Decorating the House for Christmas

(don't know where it was done, but I love the idea and the story is great)

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Urban

I have been cleaning out email at work this afternoon and found this from last month - just watched it today.

Thanks to Linda, who sent it with the title, "How This Whole Blonde Thing Got Started."

I remember this show; I guess it was a precursor to today's reality TV.