Phoebie

Wow, here it is already the end of February and I haven't updated my blog since the first of the year! The past couple of months haven't been very eventful, but yet I seem to never have time to do everything that I want to do. So, here I am, at 5 am on a Saturday updating my blog. I actually woke up at 3:30 am, tried for a half an hour or so to fall back asleep and it just wasn't happening. I've been working a lot of hours lately and dealing with sinus/health issues, so I have a lot of things that I want to do for me and my mind was racing with a list. What the heck...I might as well get out of bed and do something! :)

This is our cat, Phoebie. She is a very sweet little cat, kind of on the skitterish side but has a purr that you can hear across the room. Mark and I both talk all the time about how lucky we are that we have pets that all get along and none of them have any bad habits, like a couple in the last "batch" of pets had (Lucky -- if you're in heaven, I do miss you but you really were kind of a pain in the butt) :)

Happy New Year!

The holidays are finally over! I've been working so many hours lately that I really feel like they just flew by this year, but is's already time for the Christmas tree and the other decorations to come down. We had a very nice Christmas and are so fortunate that we are able to spend the holidays with my mom & dad & sister & her family. My mom and dad came to our house for Christmas Eve dinner (Mark decided to go "tropical" this year because I turned the heat up so much because I didn't want mom & dad to be cold). On Christmas Day, we drove out to my sister's house and had a really nice dinner and visit with everyone. Andrew even performed a piano recital for us!

We spent today pretty much doing nothing, except I was finally able to open up and "play" with some of my Christmas presents. I was totaly spoiled this year and got an Aerogarden, a CHI flat iron, and a Wii Fit in addition to a whole lot of other goodies. I think I'm really going to like having the Aerogarden and having flowers growing in the middle of winter! It came with an herb kit, but I'm going to plant an "English Cottage" garden in it for now, and it will have lavendar and snapdragons and all kinds of pretty flowers. The older I get, the more I dislike winter, even though everything is very pretty when there's a fresh snowfall.

2008 Cookie Fest

Mom and I had a great time this year making cookies. She made all of the cookie doughs during the week, so that technically all we would have to do is bake and decorate (the fun part!). I don't think either one of us anticipated that our one day Cookie Fest would actually turn into almost two full days! We made 13 different kind of cookies & candies and mom even made boxes for us to package them in all pretty. I think we overdid it just a bit because I'm sure we'll still have cookies in July.

I love this video!

Ok, so I don't know why but this little creature just makes me laugh every time. I've always been sooo stressed out at the holidays and this shows all of the most stressful times -- from burning cookies, to untangling the Christmas lights, and even Christmas shopping! I've watched this many times and it never gets old!

Happy Birthday to me!

I was so lucky that everyone in our family was able to get together for my birthday this year. We went to Red Robin for dinner and afterwards, Mark and I drove my mom & dad around to look at Christmas lights. It was a very pretty night because there was some fresh snow on the ground. We listed to Christmas music in the car -- who would've guessed that the Christmas song my dad liked best was Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"? Earlier in the day, I had gone to work for a few hours, then Mark and I went to the Anti-Cruelty Society to make some donations (this is my new birthday tradition!) and then we had Jake & Bella's pictures taken with Santa Claus @ Petsmart.

I finally made something!

Here it is! :)

This was the first crafty thing that I've done in a long time. Mark and I kept seeing really cute advent calendars at Target and we wanted to get one -- just didn't want to spend the $30 on it though. My sister, Sandi, had made one of these using a Karen Foster Countdown Calendar and it turned out so cute, so I definitely wanted to give one a try. Of course, the thing probably ended up costing a lot more than $30 by the time I bought the supplies to make it, but I really do love how it turned out!

Day of the Beagles

So, I get a phone call from my dad around 8:00 am on Sunday morning and he says "I'm not quite sure what to do but we've got problems over here". This usually means that something in their house, like a hot water heater, has broken and they need some help, so I was immediately alarmed until he got to the next sentence, which was "We have two beagle puppies over here". What? Where did they get beagle puppies? Apparently, when my mom let their dog, Jake, outside in the morning, there were two little dogs looking into their fenced yard. She brought them in so that they wouldn't get hit by a car or anything since they live on a corner, but neither one of them had tags on (they had collars though, so she knew they had to be someone's pets). I decided to wake Mark up and I can't remember the last time he got out of bed so fast! He absolutely LOVES beagles and would love to get another dog. They were really cute, but smelly! We ended up spending about 1/2 the day driving the dogs to a vet to see if they were microchipped, posting signs up all over town that we had found dogs, and calling various animal shelters, etc. Mom had already called the police to let them know that she found them. We finally got a phone call around 3:30 pm from the owners of the dogs, so they were able to be returned to their rightful owners! Thank goodness! Mark already had it all planned out that we would take one home and that my mom & dad would keep the other one, so I'm sure he was somewhat disappointed that they really lived just a few houses down the street from my mom & dad. It sure was fun playing with the puppies though -- they were so sweet! :)