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Archive for December, 2009

Happy New Year!

31 Dec

Dale and I celebrated Christmas last night–finally! He had to work late but we went for a late dinner at our favorite place and came home and opened presents! It was fun. We both had a great night and got some goodies we’ll enjoy all year long. For the nosie ones: Dale got a circular saw, a case for his light stands, and a few smaller items. I got a BodyBugg, Twin Peaks Special Edition DVD, a couple of books and the CuteOverload calendar.

Had a great holiday season–hope everyone can say the same!

 
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If it's Christmas? It's a road trip…

30 Dec
I forgot to take pictures for most of the weekend–I was too busy socializing! But I did grab a couple of photos. Here they are…

Pipi lives in the sunglasses case in the car–she is always excited for a road trip!

Those of you who were curious about the giant present under the Christmas tree? It was for Dale’s dad. It was some Gorilla Gear for his car. It’s almost impossible to buy for him so we were super excited to have something we knew he might like–and since he put the gear in his car asap we think we made the right choice! It’s a heavy duty liner for the back of his car. He liked the Gorilla Gear we got with Betty.

The kids were rather excited to get Nerf guns that quickly turned into a non-stop game of finding the Nerf sponge bullets.

On Christmas morning we went to Wayne and Lisa’s house–and everybody got to play with the Wii, which was fun–Barb is obviously kicking ass here…

Lisa even made a turkey! We had a tasty turkey lunch before heading over to my Aunt Diane and Uncle Randy’s for ham and all kinds of family favorites. Amazingly, I never got around to taking any pictures there! Can you believe it? I’m super sad I forgot to do that. I got to meet my cousin Ryan’s little baby Riley–he looks like a Gerber baby! And got to catch up with the family. It was really nice!

The day after Christmas we stopped in to say hello at the bowling alley where Lauren and Ian were enjoying the annual “Day after Christmas Bowling” that everybody does. Right? Dale got some cute pics of the kids bowling.

That evening we took Dale’s mom out for dinner–the 27th is her birthday and so we feasted at a steakhouse called Lucky’s–it was good! I didn’t get any pics of that either. Gah!

Trying to take a serious portrait of the children is not the easiest thing to do!

Ian throws the ball pretty much straight up in the air–he’s lucky it doesn’t take out his toes. Even so? He’s still a better bowler than I am. Sad, but true. In other news, I got my mom’s bowling ball with the custom bag that my father made for her. So now I have my own purple ball with my initials on it and a leather bag with my initials on it! My mom and I shared initials for those slower kids playing at home…I got the bowling ball from my Aunt Judy. I met up with her and my Aunt Charlene for lunch last Sunday and it was so great to see them and hang out. I wish I’d had more time with them!

Dale and I took a little time between visits with people to check out the slowly-revitalizing downtown Flint. Very cool! The ol‘ town is lookin‘ pretty good, all things considered. I wish we’d have had time to check out the restaurants there.

On our last night in town we met up with our friends Meghan and Bravin and had a FEAST at the Japanese steakhouse at Great Lakes Crossing called Miyako. It was quite tasty! We really had a nice time catching up with those two and stuffing our faces. Seriously, that place is delish!

We wish we could have seen more people and spent a little longer with everyone we saw!

And, after several days of eating out, I’m ready for one of those detox diets or something. Wow, we feasted our way around Michigan and had a really great Christmas! Thanks to everyone for hanging out (and for the presents and the food, of course).

Dale and I are celebrating our Christmas together tonight so we can savor them over this long weekend. Is there anything better than having four days off with no plans but to relax?

 

Flashback…Sarah's Wedding!

28 Dec
My lame cat photos have prompted Dale to give up the goods! Also, he’s on holiday and finally had some time to breathe! At any rate, I wanted to share some photos from my dear friend Sarah’s wedding from a few weeks back! She was quite the beautiful and sophisticated bride! I was sitting next to my dear friend Betsy and we were just chatting casually and then when Sarah come down the aisle we both burst into tears–we laughed and looked at each other and wondered where in the hell those tears came from! Who knew we were such softies?

Sarah and her new husband Bruce looked very happy! We were very excited to be able to share the day with them.

The first kiss! It was hilarious. He just kept kissing her and she started to laugh and he just kept on smooching. Adorable.

We blew bubbles at the newlyweds as they came out of the church. Despite being a late fall day the weather was quite mild–a perfect day for a wedding!

They came out and greeted the guests before going back inside for portraits.

Of course, Betsy and I cornered Sarah for the perennial Mackinac Girls photo. We’re still adorable, even after all these years! I’ll have to post a pic of us back in ’93 if I ever get around to scanning all those photos in!

A quick portrait of the happy couple and we were off to the dinner reception.

Here’s Sarah with her cutie-pie flower girls!

A pretty, perfect cake…

ended up on the groom’s face!

The food was fab, the wine was divine, and getting to spend a nice long dinner with Betsy and Bryan–not to mention sharing in Sarah and Bruce’s big day!–made this a great highlight to a wonderful year!
 
 

I told you it would be like this…

25 Dec
Monty, protecting his Christmas tree.

Sidney snuck in to get his picture taken–and sleep near the cozy glow of lights.
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I’ve shamed Dale into getting me some photos so expect some late night updates this weekend.

 
 

Merry Christmas

24 Dec
We’re heading to Flint for the holidays! Maybe we’ll see you there. If not, have a happy holiday.
 
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2009 Christmas Decorations

23 Dec

It’s a double update, people! I have scads of Christmas decorations, 99% of which were my moms. I’m thankful to have her decorations because she LOVED Christmas. Anyway, my favorite not-hand-painted decorations are these little Home Interiors Angels. The blond disappeared a few years ago and I scored a replacement on ebay last year. She’s a cutie! I adored them when I was a kid and still think they are super adorable. They’re in my dining room on a shelf.

On the opposite end of the long shelf are the Home Interiors elves that correspond to the angels. I always thought of them as belonging to the little angels as a kid. The yellow and red one went missing years ago and I just bought the replacement piece of ebay this year! I LOVE ebay!

The bulk of my Christmas decorations are knickknacks hand-painted by my mom! These two little scenes light up. They each feature a brunette girl hanging in a cozy living room–of course, girls were always painted with brunette hair because they all represented me. I come by my narcissism honestly.

Our fabulous Christmas tree! I love this tree to bits. I have a hilarious video of Dale cutting it down and he was embarrassed because the video pretty much consists of Dale shaking his butt as he cuts the tree down and then the tree tips over. It’s like Dale’s butt and the tree had a dance contest and Dale’s butt won!

An aerial view of my little Christmas village. My mom did an awesome job painting these! They are very cute and very detailed.

Our stockings are hung (not pictured) by our big speaker stands with care so that we could put some real swag on our mantle–and tape up all of our Christmas cards. Can you spot your kids? You probably can if you sent us a photo card.
 
 

An update! Finally!

23 Dec

Monty is obsessed with the Christmas tree. He stares at it longingly and likes to sit in the chair next to it. He spends a lot of time looking at it worriedly–but that’s because Monty has only two expressions: pensive and blank.

Monty, taking his place among the presents.

So Dale says he’s too busy to give me photos–and has been for months–so I guess from now on you’ll get photos of stuff I take pictures of (until you form an uprising). These photos will largely consist of blurry pictures of the cats doing things I think are cute, photos of our Christmas tree, photos of Monty in front of our Christmas tree and random images of half-finished crafts.

This blog is about to get a lot less fabulous is what I’m saying (or more fabulous if you’re into craft projects and blurry cat pics).

Also? I have a new laptop and it isn’t loaded with my sweet photo processing software. So the images will also be oddly sized and lacking color correction to offset the blurriness. So there’s that.

In other news…
Mr. Squirrel would like you to know that he still lives on the back porch and will gladly accept any packages that include sunflower seeds, preferable the black ones. They’re his favorite and he sort of eats a shocking number of them a week. He’s a little nervous that I won’t have time to go to the store to get more before we head back to Michigan for the holiday. He’s precariously low on seeds, people!