December 21, 2008

Here's what it looks like right now where Jamie used to live:

Brrrrrrr!!!!

Added more holiday pictures to the Flickr album. Enjoy!

December 15, 2008

Happy Holidays from the Hylands!

I've uploaded a few pictures of our holiday decor to the Flickr album. I need to take a few more!

We've already gotten a bit of our Christmas. We exchanged presents when Mom, Mema, and Grandpa came up for Thanksgiving. So far our Christmas haul includes: drill bits, a box cutter, clothes, a heavy duty staple gun, a tripod for the camera, Yahtzee, Rummykub, playing cards and a playing card holder, new sheetmusic, scrapbook stuff, a new door mat, a nice pen, a neat radio/flashlight that can be cranked up for power, Santa burner covers, a Christmas bell, and a cutting board.

Then this past weekend, we went shopping for Jamie's grandma's gifts to put under our tree. We bought four new pillows, new sheets for our still new bed, pillow shams to match the new quilt for our new bed, a Playstation game for Jamie, new shoes and a new shirt for me, kitchen towels and washcloths, and a spacious camera bag for our camera and all its accessories.

Even with all the stuff we've already gotten, we still have a massive pile of presents under the tree!

I get two full weeks off of work starting next Monday! I haven't gotten that much time off during the holidays since I was in school! Awesome!!! (This isn't vacation time. This is free holiday time!!!) I have no idea what we'll do to while away the hours. I'm sure there will be much video gaming and even more lazying about.

At work tomorrow I'm looking forward to stuffing myself silly at our departmental Christmas lunch. I'm taking green bean casserole and a yummy cornbread casserole (is it tacky that I totally just spooned up a corner of the casserole for a taste and now there's a hole?!). On top of the food, I'll also be providing the musical entertainment with a co-worker who plays the guitar.

Merry Christmas!!!

December 11, 2008

I've been tagged!

I was tagged by Angie. Here are the rules:

1. choose the 4th picture folder on your computer

2. choose the 4th picture

3. explain the picture

This is it. Sadly it isn't half as interested as the one Angie posted (she's about three and sitting on a dead deer her daddy had killed!). It's our corner cabinet decorated for Christmas last year. It's not quite decorated like that this year, and I'll try to get pictures of this year's decorations taken and posted to Flickr this weekend.

On the cabinet from top to bottom: Two nutcrackers from my Uncle Don; my Noah's ark; a nutcracker pillow that Angie's family gave me for Christmas one year; a really cool clear plastic set of a fiddler, a caroler, and a light pole; a $1 nativity from the dollar store; a snowball; a handpainted Christmas ornament; a nutcracker nativity given to me by my Uncle Don; a lighted house; a snowglobe with a violin playing snowman; and the twin to the snowman on the middle shelf. This year the cabinet features even more nutcrackers and several Santas.

Please keep my mom in your thoughts. While her last chemo went pretty smoothly (her port actually worked like it was supposed to this time), she now is battling a viral infection. It could be the flu or something similar, but it's hard for a person who has a compromised immune system to fight off. My grandma called on Tuesday to let me know mom was sick and had gone to the doctor for some medicine. Mom didn't even feel like talking so I didn't get to talk to her on Tuesday, but I talked to her last night and she said she felt better than she did the day before.

November 21, 2008

Seven days till Thanksgiving and look what we woke up to this morning:

First snow of the season up here, though Mom said they had snow on Tuesday. Well pffffft on them. More snow pictures are in our Flickr album.

I've done all the Christmas shopping I was planning to do except for the gifts we'll ship out to people. Those gifts just have to be finished and mailed. There's a pile of lovely presents in one of the closets in our guest room (that now has a bed!).

I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS!!

November 9, 2008

They're alive!

My poor little mum that was chewed to pieces by a squirrel has survived to bloom again. YAY!

Oh, and we have photoshop again. :)

November 6, 2008

Hmm...haven't updated in a while. Not much has been going on. We did splurge on a brand new bed a few weeks ago. It is the most wonderful bed ever! Plus, now we actually have a real bed in the second bedroom. Guests don't have to sleep on the fold out couch anymore. YAY!

The fall colors are spectacular this year. I took a few pictures near where I work because the trees on campus are very pretty. Check them out in our Flickr album.

I'm just counting down the days until Thanksgiving! Food and family and holiday shopping. I can't wait!

I don't know why but I'm super excited about Christmas this year. I just absolutely love wandering around the holiday aisles at Walmart and Target, even though Christmas is still over a month and a half away. I'm usually a little perturbed that stores don't even get halloween stuff out before they get Christmas stuff in. But this year I'm just eagerly soaking it all in. I bought a lot of new decorations after Christmas last year. Just going through our boxes of decor will be like Christmas morning! I never remember from one year to the next exactly what I have and I'm always happily surprised when I found something I forgot I had. I'll probably be like a madwoman with the camera snapping shots of the tree from dozens of angles.

The apartment complex just down the road, where I lived right after college, has been advertising for months that they're undergoing $3 million in renovations (sounds like a lot, but the complex is HUGE so it probably isn't all that much). The good thing about their renovation project is that it seems to have kicked our complex into renovation mode too. Just this week we got very lovely new white PVC fencing in the back of our building to separate each unit's patio. And today they FINALLY finished paving and painting our parking lot. YAY! Now we have freshly painted lines and numbers on our parking spots. I wonder what else our complex has planned. Maybe some new washers and dryers in the laundry room -- which we only used when our washer was on the fritz. I'd like to have a workout room, but I don't think there's room for one in our complex's office. I'm happy with what we have though. The fencing is really nice and won't rot like wood.

Product/service review: You know I love Flickr. I love it enough to have bought an actual subscription so we could post an unlimited amount of pictures. I've also recently used Flickr's photo printing service. It is AWESOME! There are two options -- have your photos processed somewhere and mailed to you or have your photos processed at Target where you can pick them up. I thought the Target option would be really cool, until I saw that Target was going to charge almost twice as much as getting the photos processed somewhere else and then shipped. Needless to say, I didn't get them processed at Target. The photos came out really well. Flickr gives you a good choice of print sizes too. I got some in 5x7 and even a few in 8x10. Photos are printed on Kodak paper and are shipped in a very sturdy envelope. I highly recommend the Flickr service, not only for a great place online to store and share your photos, but also as a great place to get your photos printed!

October 13, 2008

Update on my grandpa:

Grandpa, who if you'll remember had a very strange bout of something last fall that lasted well into the spring before he ever really recovered, is doing much better. He has a genetic condition that has done bad things for his lungs (lifelong asthma sufferer) and liver. He basically has the lungs of a smoker and the liver of an alcoholic, even though he has never smoked or drank a day in his life! But, he went back to the doctor today and had a lung capacity test done. His lung function has gone from 46% to 60% since his last test! YAY! The doctor told him he'd see him in a year. Grandpa has been doing rehab ever since he got out of the hospital. He even kept going to rehab once his prescribed time was up, and my grandma decided she'd join in on the rehab fun. Rehab is basically the gym for old folks with cardiac/respiratory problems and is overseen by a troupe of very nice nurses. It keeps them occupied. They get to be out with people (some old friends from the Dupont days and some new friends met at rehab) and get to be active away from the house. Mom goes with them occasionally, but just to sit and watch.