This, That, and The Other

Hello all! It has been a while since I posted. So much has happened! First of all, I will say that one of the biggest reasons I haven't been blogging much lately is that my computer was sick for a while and it was just not fun to play on. Some of my more recent slide shows were done on Scott's computer. Scott has fixed my computer, though. We had to wait until he was done with his classes before he could work on it. He just decided that since my computer is about 6 years old, the operating system had gotten corrupted over time. So, he wiped it clean and reloaded everything. My computer is much happier now! It is great to have an in-house IT guy!

Well, the season of Christmas parties is in full swing! Scott and I went to his office's Christmas party at the 1818 Club on Sugarloaf Parkway in the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce building on the evening of December 2. I must say that I was not looking forward to this one. I really did not enjoy this one last year...but, it turned out a lot better this year. We sat with some really nice people and it was just all around more enjoyable. On December 9, we went to a Christmas party for everyone at my office at one of the VP's, Wayne's, house. Not everyone from the office came, but it was fun and Wayne's mom was there and we were just all able to sit around and chat. Then, this past Wednesday, December 12, we had our Ladies' Bible Study Christmas party and gift swap which was a ton of fun as always when we get together. Our church small group Christmas party was Saturday night (December 15) at Amy and Josh's and that was a lot of fun, too. We had a white elephant gift swap. If you don't know what this is, it is when everyone brings a gift (we set our limit at $10) and wraps it and everyone draws numbers. Person 1 has to unwrap a gift and then person 2 can steal his gift or unwrap a new gift and then person 1 has to unwrap another gift if his is stolen, and so on and so forth. It is really interesting to see what people bring. Follow is a list of the items brought to ours: fireworks, a gingerbread house kit, a twin pack of enemas, a nail glam kit, a miniature bowling alley, a Starbucks gift card, a little snowman that wore bling and sang "Ice, Ice, Baby" while bobbing his head and moving his little hands around, a little ceramic pill box that had Jesus on the lid, a crazy green hat with an attached veil, a calendar with the ugliest dogs you have ever seen on it, a little reindeer on a keychain that pooped cola flavored candy, and an insulated back pack complete with plastic place settings, corkscrew, and bottle opener. So as you can see, a lot of crazy stuff! Scott and I came off pretty well - we got the miniature bowling alley and the gingerbread house kit (which we brought, actually). Then, tomorrow, Scott's office is having a "holiday lunch" and my office is having a "holiday lunch" on Thursday. Saturday, we are visiting and swapping gifts with my immediate family (which will include a visit with Meme) and then on Sunday we are visiting and swapping gifts with Scott's immediate family. We will probably go to Scott's cousin's house on Christmas day out in Monroe and then we'll see my extended family in January.

Scott and I made our gingerbread house on Sunday afternoon. It is very cute. The picture on the box is kind of deceptive, though because it shows this huge base with plenty of room for two gingerbread people and two trees, but you really only have space for two out of the four. So, we took pictures with everything there and then ate the trees. Mmmmm. My friend from college, Mary, has also made gingerbread houses with her husband. She has pictures on her blog, which you can visit here. Below are pictures of our gingerbread house. One with and one without the trees. Please, no laughing. We have never claimed to have artistic talent...I mean, we are a Network Administrator and a CPA for goodness sakes!
















Our house is all decorated for Christmas! I love it when we decorate for Christmas! I just realized that I haven't taken any pictures of the house yet this year. I am going to run out and take some so that I can post at least the night-time view here...be back in a minute....okay, I am back, and frozen. I mean, it is officially cold! I was getting so tired of the cold weather and then it heated back up into the 70's for about a week and then all of a sudden, it got super cold again. Brrrrrr!
Here's the best picture I could get of our house. I had to take it at an angle because the for sale sign was in the way, so it looks like Scott only hung lights on half of the entrance, but there are lights all the way around our entrance. The deer are a new addition this year. We have been wanting them for years, but could never find them the day after Christmas, so we bought them this year anyway.

This wreath is an example of the wreaths we have on each window of our house. They look really cute during the day.

Thankfully, we got some rain this weekend! We have a rain gauge in our front garden and we got about 1 inch this weekend, which is really good! Did anyone else get rain recently?

I really enjoy buying Christmas gifts for people. It is just so much fun. In the past, Scott and I have not really exchanged gifts. We usually just don't get anything at all from each other with the basis being that we buy ourselves things we need and want throughout the year. Last year we bought our digital camera, which as you can see, the newness of that has NOT worn off yet. But, this year we have wish lists and so that makes it much easier to just click on the things we want when we think of it, so it is a lot easier for us to save those little things we want instead of trying to remember them for when someone asks us for a birthday or Christmas list. So...we are actually going to exchange gifts! I don't know if you have checked out wishlist.com, but if you click on one of our wish lists to the left, you can see what I am talking about. It is like the wedding registry at most stores, only it is not store specific. You can find what you want online and link to it but the buyer does not have to buy it from that spot, they can simply click "buy it" and put in their email address and then go to the store and buy the item there or find it on another website cheaper. Also, you can give the same list to multiple people and not be afraid that you will end up with duplicates because a responsible giver will mark the item off. The beauty of it all is that when I sign in to my wishlist, I CAN'T tell what anyone has bought me! I have not even looked once, which is saying a lot. All of the ladies in my Bible study have a wishlist too. We are all big fans! I had finished all of our Christmas shopping except for my gifts for Scott, so I took this past Friday off work to do all that. It was really nice to just have a day to drive around Snellville and Loganville and shop. I even went grocery shopping and got to grab lunch at Moe's, of which I am a big fan!

Here is our Christmas tree. I like the picture with the gifts the best, because it looks more complete, but I had to show you all the picture of the tree about 5 seconds after I had put down the tree skirt...Sampson claimed his spot under the tree!

Okay, so this has been a long blog. Sorry. But, it has been a while. I will post a few pictures in this post, but I'll probably do a couple of separate posts following this one to post a couple of slide shows from our various events.

**Just as a note, I really did not misspell the word "This" on the title of my post. I looked at it at work today and it was spelled correctly and now it is spelled "Thia". I have corrected it now. But, I have had an "s" in one of my posts turn into and "a" in the past and not been able to correct it. Has anyone else had this problem?