Christmas 2009

Trav and I had a great Christmas holiday. We spent a week in Hawaii (pics to come later) then came home and spent time with both our families. It was a great break from work and we had such a nice relaxing time the whole week! It was one of the best Christmases in a while! I told Trav that I just wanted to go shopping for clothes this year for my gift so I hit all the after Christmas sales and got tons of cute stuff. But Travis did buy some cute little stocking stuffers for Christmas morning. My absolute favorite gift of all, including all the clothes I got, was this:

It was $1.99 but hands down the best thing I got! For those of you who aren't familiar, the slang term for this is a "Jesus fish." It's a metal ornament people put on that back of their cars. The history is that during the time when Christians had to worship in secret they created this symbol that they would draw in the dirt with their foot to signal to other Christians that they were planning to meet that day. Also, sometimes people would draw half of the symbol in the dirt and wait to see if someone drew the other half. That's how they identified themselves as Christians to other people. So in a state where there isn't a majority population of Christians, this is how I'm identifying myself to others. :)

The Holidays in New York City

At work, our Christmas...I mean Holiday party was themed "The Holidays in New York City." I had originally wanted to call it "Christmas in New York City" but my boss wouldn't let me. Things are a little different in Las Vegas. :) Anyway, it was a great party! We had employees sharing their talents all day in a talent show. I included the picture of the guy playing the ukulele because last week, he left a message on my office phone asking if he had to audition. Just to be safe, he played me a song over the phone! It was awesome! I also had a guy who plays the tuba ask if he could perform. I also had several singers, 2 bands and a Liza Manelli impersonator. It was a great day!

Christmas Tree...Oh Christmas Tree!

Trav and I had a great time yesterday picking out a real tree from a lot by our house. I was surprised at what a difference a real tree makes! I'm a little stuffed up so I can't smell it's wonderful smell but there's a definite feeling about having a live tree in my house that makes me happy! I decided to go with an icy, wintery theme for the decor. I even sprinkled fake snow on the branches! Behold...

Christmasalatizing

I've officially started Christmasalatizing my house! We decided to get a real tree this year so we're going to wait one more week for that. Here's what I've done so far.

Anonymous

Has anyone ever been left an anonymous letter from "A Neighbor" before? When we first moved in we let Jane and Tuck stay outside all day while we were at work because Tuck would chew on the furniture if we left them inside. Then we got an anonymous letter stating that our dog was barking "literally all day." Even though I refused to believe Jane was actually barking for 9 hours straight, we decided to leave her inside all day, and leave Tuck outside all day since he doesn't bark, but chews! Keep in mind, I got a second dog because I felt guilty that Jane had to be alone all day. Now I just have two lonely dogs.

So, whenever we're going to be gone for short periods of time, we leave the dogs together outside. When we got home from church today there was another anonymous letter stating Jane had been barking for an hour and half straight and that several neighbors would appreciate us not letting our dog outside during the day while we're gone and not to let them out so early in the morning on weekdays!! Does this sound unreasonable to anyone else? We NEVER let our dogs go outside after 9pm and because I have to leave for work at 7:45am I have to let Jane out between 7am-7:30am because, keep in mind, they requested I not leave her outside during the day! I'm just furious with the whole situation! I would completely understand if our dogs were outside at night keeping people awake. But they're not. And I don't understand who gets mad about a dog barking in the afternoon! Furthermore, at some point during the day, my dog HAS to go outside. Apparently my neighbors get to decide when that is. That is all.

There's an app for that

I feel like I could create an individual blog entry for each reason I love my iPhone. I will start with my most recent app (short for application-something you can download to your phone) which is called "Lose it." It's a calorie counter/miracle worker! First you put in what your current weight, height and age is. Then it asks what your goal weight is. You then choose how aggressively you want to loose weight (1/2 lb a week, 1 lb a week etc.) Then it tells you how many calories you can eat in a day to get to your goal weight.

Each day you add everything you ate. It has a huge data base of foods and it budgets how many more calories you can eat that day.

It also lets you add exercise and tells you how many calories that burned. The more you burn, the more you can eat!

I'm trying to tone up a little before our trip to Hawaii next month. The other day I ate a piece of cake for breakfast and by dinner time I only had 10 calories left in my budget. So I went and danced for 1/2 hour and earned (or burned) enough calories to have dinner! It's great!

I know I couldn't stay on the program forever but it's great for a short term goal. It also gives me a good feel for what foods are extra high in calories and how much I should be eating and exercising each day.

Stay tuned for other reasons why I love my iPhone.

Holiday Decor

Lately I've been really into decorating my house for holidays. Trav and I spooked up our front yard for Halloween and yesterday I went to the craft store and went a little crazy with the Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations. I bought stuff to make a beautiful Thanksgiving centerpiece and all new tree decorations for Christmas. Last night Travis asked if I wanted to put up our tree next weekend since he knew I was so excited about the new decor. It was then that we realized we don't even have a tree! Last year, all the the prelit lights on our tree went dead. We tried to fix them but no success. It ended up looking terrible stringing new lights over the thousands of dead lights already in the tree. So we tossed the tree and decided to buy a new one this year. I had obviously forgotten all about this since I was justifying spending a little extra on decorations thinking I wouldn't have to buy a tree this year! Maybe the tree will be my Christmas present from Trav! :)