December Superpost

So, I have not been blogging recently due to a complete lack of time. Most of the time, for me at least, lack of blogging = lack of interesting material. Not the case this past week. We’ve had so much going on lately!!! I’ve been so good about taking pictures, too!!! So here it is – and it’s not short. All of my great ideas for blog posts wrapped up into a Top 10 list. I tried to summarize…but it didn’t really work. Take your time and enjoy!

10.

We spent the Thanksgiving Holidays in Salisbury, NC with my dad’s side of the family. I got to visit with Nonnie, my grandmother, who has not been doing so well lately. It was good to see her! Also, I also got to hang out with my Mom, Dad, Brother, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and all of their children (who, apparently, are my first cousins once removed). Three of my cousins all had babies within 3 months of each other - one of them had twins!! So, we had 4 very energetic 1-year-olds at Thanksgiving this year! It made me realize that I think I’m going to have to find some energy before having children! Here we all are...

9.

I got up at 2:45am (Central Time) on Black Friday, and headed out to get a few things on my list! After a not-so-exciting door buster moment, I bought those few things, and I headed straight back to bed to catch a few more hours of sleep! That afternoon, we did some serious shopping at Concord Mills – a fabulous outlet mall in North Carolina! Can I just say that I love 50% off sales at the Banana Republic Factory Store???

8.

We headed home to Huntsville from North Carolina on Sunday – yes, the WORST possible day to travel – EVER!!! Our 7 ½ hour trip not-so-quickly developed into an 11 hour trip. About 3-4 hours of this 11 hour trip was spent traveling at the lightning fast speed of 25 mph!!!! UGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

7.

On a more positive note – I got to listen to Christmas music for 11 straight hours! I refuse to listen to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s all I listen to from that time until New Years! I LOVE CHRISTMAS MUSIC – I seriously cannot get enough of it!!! My favorite albums are Point of Grace’s – A Christmas Story and Steven Curtis Chapman’s – The Music of Christmas. Also, I would like to thank 96.9 for feeding my addition to and from work.

6.

Brrrrr…….it got COLD in Huntsville this past week! We experienced the first snow flurry of the season which went something like this, “I think I see a flake of snow….yep, I think I just saw another one – IT’S SNOWING!” Kevin and I also got brave and used our fireplace for the first time! We were a little afraid that our chimney would not work properly and the house would fill with smoke, but everything went great! There is no better feeling than snuggling by a fire drinking hot chocolate! I expect there will be many more fires before the end of winter!

5.

I have been too busy for necessity shopping recently, and we needed a lot of stuff in a lot of areas, so I got all organized for a big shopping trip to CVS, Kroger, and Wal-Mart. I spent a lot of money (which was expected and had been budgeted for), but I saved over $40 using coupons! WOW, I love coupons!!! I had never gotten brave enough to try the “CVS game” that I had heard so much about on other posts, but I finally did and it works! I got:

2 large bottles of contact solution
2 tubes of Crest toothpaste
1 Softsoap refill
1 Dove Body Wash
2 Ragu Spaghetti Sauces

All for around $20!!! This would have cost over $35 had I not use coupons and ECB’s! I am not that good at the game yet, but I will get better with practice… Kevin, on the other hand, has always been good at saving money! His “skills” were on display this week on our bathroom counter….

Yes, that is a dissected tube of toothpaste (which we could squeeze no more) and a bottle of lotion (which the straw had gotten too short to reach the remaining lotion)! When I told him to throw them away, Kevin reminded me that Dave says we have to “Live like no one else, so later, we can live like no one else.” Sometimes Dave quotes are annoying, but…

4.

Our vacation budgeting efforts have brought us to the place where we are ready to travel like no one else – YEAH!!! We are finishing up plans to go skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado in January, and take the long-awaited trip to Europe. We are going to Rome, Paris, and London in May! Some of our favorite things are traveling and doing things that we’ve never done before! These two trips are the pinnacle of those two favorites!

3.

We’ve been breaking/losing things lately. We pulled out the vacuum cleaner the other day, and it started smoking. I must admit that I was not that sad that our $19.99 vacuum has finally died after almost 3 years of marriage. I’ve been waiting expectantly for that thing to die! So, I got to do some vacuum shopping. I had no idea that they were so expensive! I knew that I didn’t want the $19 special again, but I don’t really want to spend $700 either! After much internet research and physically shopping for/touching more vacuums than I care to remember, I found a great deal on the Bissell Healthy Home vacuum at Linens n Things online – less than half the price of the other stores!!! Gotta love going out of business sales (even if it is a sign of the economy)! So, I’ve ordered it, and I am excitedly awaiting its arrival in 6-10 business days! I hope that I’ll like it! The reviews didn’t have much negative to say other than the fact that it’s pretty heavy, but so are a lot of the more expensive/12 amp vacuums that I was looking at! I’ll just think to myself that weight = quality!

On a sadder note, somewhere in the midst of all this holiday/necessity shopping, I lost the pearl out of my beautiful pearl ring that Kevin gave me when we were dating. I loved this ring, and I could not believe it when I looked down to see that the pearl was missing =( So, if you see a lonely pearl rolling around Huntsville, please let me know!!!

2.

Let the Christmas season officially begin! We went to Valley Christmas Tree Plantation on Saturday and cut down the most beautiful tree we could find!

Just kidding…this is the tree we actually got. I love Christmas trees! Can you tell?

After soaking the trunk in a bucket of water over night, attending our church choir’s Christmas performance on Sunday morning, a baby shower in the afternoon for me, and skeet shooting for Kevin, we came home Sunday night to set up our tree! Kevin decided to hammer our stand onto our tree…but he hit the stand a little too hard...

So, after a trip to Wally World to get a tree stand that would actually hold water, we tried again! It worked, and we dragged the tree inside to set it up (forgetting that we do not have a vacuum at this time…oops!!!). We finally got the tree set up, and called some neighbors to borrow their vacuum…thank goodness for neighbors!

1.

We finished decorated the tree and the house for Christmas! I love decorating for Christmas!!! In my opinion, it’s the best holiday of the year! At this point, we have quite a variety of ornaments. Most are from a Christmas shower which we had before we got married, and some are from my former students. The ones we love the most though are all the ornaments we have collected as we have traveled to new places. Starting on our honeymoon, we have gotten an ornament from every place we’ve traveled to as a married couple! I love taking out all of those ornaments and remembering all our fun trips.

Thanks for reading, and have a very Merry Christmas!