'tis the season!

I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the prospect of Christmas! I'm just so excited I can hardly contain myself! Today I'm decorating. We usually decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving, but Brian and I were soooo enjoying our time together, we just didn't get around to it. He can't lift anything anyway, so I'm on my own for climbing up to the attic to get down the trees.

Right now, Christmas music is blaring from iTunes (I LOVE iTunes!) and I'm about to have some homemade hot chocolate! I'll probably sweat while drinking it, but who cares! Not me! Dinner, which is Dream Dinners' chicken pot pie, is done, just needs to be popped into the oven for about a half hour. So I have lots of time to deck the halls!

I'm nearly done making my Christmas cards. I have been having so much fun making them, I might have to make some for next year already! LOL! Can you tell I'm slightly excited about the season?? Of course, it would be nice if it wasn't 80 degrees, but that can't be helped. Anyway, I'll be posting some of my cards later. This year, instead of making them all the same like I usually do, I'm making all different ones.

Thanksgiving was a blast! We had an absolutely wonderful time! It was us, Tim & Christi, and Justin & Molly. We're so thankful for our fun friends! Here was the menu:

Turkey (marinated in Williams-Sonoma's spiced brining mix, delicious!)
Mashed Potatoes & gravy
Corn
Mac & Cheese
Green Bean Casserole
Fruit Salad
Garlic Cheese Biscuits (a la Red Lobster)

Pumpkin/Apple Butter pie
Apple Crisp
Cookies that looked like turkeys (picture to follow, so yummy and cute!)
French Silk pie

I think that's it. Brian and I have been having turkey every day since! It just keeps getting better. I need to make turkey more often! OK, back to the decorating. Just wanted to take a quick minute and write. Cheers!

a spontaneous feast

OK, so we just decided yesterday to host Thanksgiving dinner at our house and have a celebration with friends, a la New York Thanksgivings. We're so excited and I'm running around like a crazy woman! I did make it to Williams Sonoma and got some of their brine for my turkey - something new for this year. I also got some of their gravy base, which I've heard is delicious. I've tried to get the gravy several times, but they're always sold out! Must be good!

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! Brian has a follow-up appt. with his surgeon today, so I'll update on that soon. Cheers!

wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Brian got his Nintendo Wii today. He's as excited as a kid on Christmas. Well, this pretty much IS his Christmas! :-) The Wii is not available to the public yet, but these are the perks of working in the game industry. (It'll be available in like 2 days, though, so it's not like he got it THAT much earlier!)

Tonight I'm going to a scrapbook thing and Brian is going to stay home and play with his Wii. Sounds a bit vulgar, doesn't it? LOL! Even funnier - next week our friends Tim and Christi are coming over and while Christi and I make Christmas cards, Brian and Tim are going to play with their Wiis together! HAHAHAHA! Seriously though, what was Nintendo thinking calling it the Wii? It was originally supposed to be the Nintendo Revolution or something like that!

Check this out: How adorable is that?? That's my Maxie. I just took this a few minutes ago. And that's the blind on the sliding glass door that looks like it's cutting him in half! He gets in the blinds and gets all comfy and rolls over, and he takes the blinds with him! I feel bad that I post more pics of Max than of Sam, but when Sam gets in cute poses and I take his picture, he's so black you can't tell which end is up! He's on the couch in my scraproom now, lemme see if I can get a good shot. There we go. There's my Sammy. Of course, as soon as I sat back down in my chair to upload the pic, he got up from his perch on the couch and got in my lap. He's such a lap cat! (Both pictures are clickable.)

Anyway, that's all I have to say today! Except I'm tired! Wonder why?!

why, oh, why?

It's 2:30 am here in O-town, cloudy and 54 degrees.

And I'm awake. For no apparent reason.

So this is my second night in a row to be an insomniac. Last night, or maybe I should say yesterday morning, I didn't go to sleep until sometime after 5:30. I got up this morning around 10:00 and spent the day doing things around here. I deep-cleaned our bedroom, moving furniture and vacuuming thoroughly around, between, under, and behind everything. I did some more organizing in the closet, washed the sheets, blankets, and bedspread from our bed. I de-cat-haired everything in our room, including the lamp shades. (Still need to do the curtains - that's for tomorrow. Or, I guess, today.)

I did tons of laundry and picked up all around the house. I cooked a big dinner and didn't do a lot of resting today. You'd think that doing all that on 4.5 hours of sleep would make me tired. But no. Oh, no. Here I am! This happens to me occasionally, and there's not much that's more frustrating to me. I'm tired. I want to sleep.

Oh well, I just took a Tylenol PM - a little late, don't you think - and now I'm going to listen to my book (Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B. Ross, love it) and stamp some cards or something. I've been very motivated to stamp lately! So here goes.

See - THIS is why I hate it when people call early in the morning. You never know what time I actually went to sleep. *sigh*

*Edited to add: I went to bed at 6:15 and still had trouble falling asleep! I got some really cute Christmas tags made though. But they're for my secret sister, so I'll have to post them later! :-)

happy birthday, meg!

Happy birthday to my spectacular friend Meg!! (It was Sunday, but everyone knows I'm never on time...) Anyway, Meg, hope you had a wonderful day.

OK, Brian went back to work yesterday and he's feeling great. He called me today and was so energetic sounding - he's SO happy to be feeling normal and virtually pain-free! He's now off all meds. He's an amazing man.

Thursday night was not an easy night. Brian was in a LOT of pain from the incision, and he was VERY sick from the anesthesia. At the hospital, every time he got up, he became nauseous and then had dry heaves (he hadn't eaten in over 24 hours at that point). It was awful - every time he heaved, it would hurt his back. The nurse and I were trying to hold him up, but he's so tall - we were afraid he was going to fall down. It was quite an ordeal, but we got through it! Oh, and of course he was walking around mooning everyone since you know how those hospital gowns are! I was trying to told him up and hold his gown closed in the back! Now that I think back about it, it was hilarious!

Once we got him in the car, he seemed okay. He had to hold this vomit bin on his lap the whole way home - about a 40 min. drive - just in case he needed it. But he was fine; he slept most of the way home. Of course, I had to stop at Walgreen's and get the drugs, and 400 people buying toilet paper and such were in line in front of me. Ugh!

So while we were waiting for the Rx to be filled, I drove through Wendy's and got B a Sprite, which he said tasted like heaven! LOL When we finally got home, I got him in bed, then I proceeded to stay up for most of the night cause I was just worried about him. Every time he woke up I would make him get up and walk around to prevent blood clots! I was worried most about blood clots!

Can I just say that the worst part of the surgery for me was seeing Brian hurt. It didn't help when the nurse went to put in his IV - he hadn't thought about that, so he was unprepared. I knew he was getting one, but I didn't want him to freak - he's not so thrilled about needles - so I didn't remind him that he was getting one. Anyway, I told him to look at me, and when she finally got it in and all taped to his arm, I looked. Big mistake. There was a PUDDLE of blood on his blanket. Not just a few drops - a puddle! Oh, it nearly killed me. Brian said he had heard her say, "Oops!" But I didn't hear that, so I was pretty shocked when I saw the puddle! I had to sit down and put my head between my knees - and then the nurse says to the other nurse, "Uh-oh...the wife's going down!" LOL! I was okay, just not prepared to see my husband losing what looked like gallons of blood! So they brought me some apple juice and that helped. Sometime during the time I was dizzy and literally seeing stars, they cleaned up his hand and whisked away the blanket, so after the apple juice, everything was all clean. Man, I'm such a wimp! I just can't stand to see my sweetster in pain, that's all!!

Anyway, now the drama is over and life goes on! A pain-free life for B! Yay! Tonight we're going to our friend Justin's house to watch a movie with our friends from n-Space. We try to see a movie about once a week with this group. It's a really fun group!

Here's my latest scrapbook page of the adorable Baby B. I cannot WAIT to see him at Christmas! He's talking up a storm now! Mom and Dad kept him for part of the week last week, and Mom said when he did something he wasn't supposed to do, he waved at her and said, "Hi." Cracks me up! Anyway, enjoy.

a long, hard day

Well, the surgery is over and it went very well. We are so thankful! Brian is asleep on the couch - he's been in quite a bit of pain from the incision, but he's pretty well drugged up now. His back/leg feels great! I'm exhausted, so I'll post all of the gruesome details tomorrow. There are definitely some stories to tell!

Thanks to everyone who prayed and thought good thoughts for us today. We really appreciate it! And special thanks to my cousin Chris who came and sat with me during the surgery. We love you guys! :-D

"i'm a mutant!"

Today has not been the best day for me. It started out with me making a delicious smoothie and then, in an effort to clean the blender, knocking over the cup full of smoothie so that it dripped down the stove and cabinet into a huge purple puddle on the kitchen floor. :-( It was all underneath the stove and in every little teeny groove. Ugh. And of course, today I used blueberries, so my stove is now stained purple in spots. I'll have to take my Mr. Clean magic eraser to it.

I grouchily went about my day after cleaning up the mess, and then I left to go with Brian to see the surgeon. The surgeon told us that Brian has an extra vertebra in the lumbar section of his spine!! He showed it to us on the X-Ray and MRI. It was so weird and crazy! And that vertebra doesn't have a disc between it and the first sacral vertebra. In other words, the vertebrae in the lower back section of the spine go like this: L1-L5 (that's lumbar), then S1-S5 (that's sacral). Brian has an L6!! And no disc to cushion it, so that's what has caused his prolonged back pain for the last 15+ years.

But he also has a herniated disc between L4 and L5, and that disc is bulging onto the sciatic nerve, so that's what the doctor is going to operate on. Brian will have a microdiscectomy THIS THURSDAY at 3:30, so remember him (and me!) in your prayers! This is a minimally invasive outpatient surgery, but still - they're operating on the spine, and to me, that's a big deal. I'm a bit nervous, but trusting God. What else can we do?

Anyway, after the doctor left the room, Brian goes, "Did you hear that?? I'm a MUTANT!!!" HAHAHAHA!

On the way home from the doctor, I decided to stop at the store and stock up for the weekend - I wanted to get a few special treats for B, rent some movies, and get a vegetable to go with the pork chops we're having tonight. Of course, it started POURING rain on my way into Blockbuster. Luckily, Blockbuster is located in the same shopping plaza as Publix, so I didn't have to get wet when I went between them. BUT - folks were voting at Publix, and the entrance was extremely crowded, especially since people were standing around with their groceries waiting for the rain to let up. I finally got inside, but there were no carts. Back out into the crowd I went.

It had let up some by the time I finished my shopping, but it was still totally pouring. And now the parking lot was flooded. As I made my way through the parking lot, I was actually walking in standing water. The normally 5 min. drive home took about 15 or 20, because the roads were totally flooded. I hope Brian gets home okay!

Well, I'd better get the pork chops started. I just want to get on the couch with my sweet husband and relax after this crazy and emotionally trying day. Of course, I have paperwork to go through and file, and I have to see about moving my piano students since I'll be at the hospital at their lesson times on Thursday.

I'll leave you with this little cutie: last night I was once again going through my closet, getting out clothes that don't fit anymore. (This, after running around Saturday night in a black skirt I found hanging in there with the TAGS still on it - I never wore it cause it never fit! It fits now, but every top I put on looked like I was wearing a tent! Time to go shopping again!) I had made a huge stack of tops (mostly sweaters and sweatshirts) on the bed, and I was doing some organizing in the closet. When I finished, I noticed that someone had made himself comfortable on the stack of shirts!