The past few days... (Ok, so I couldn't think of a better title)

Just a quick update on the past few days...nothing very exciting to talk about, but that's just my life!

Yesterday Russ and I went over our friends' house (the ones whose little daughter J had surgery) and took them dinner. We were SUPPOSED to get alot of snow the night before, and so I wasn't sure I'd make it to the grocery store to buy food to cook, so I ended up ordering food to-go from a local Italian restaurant. And of course, we got NO snow. Oh well... I didn't have to cook, so that was nice :-)

J is doing better, thank God! I took a gift over for her... I got her a cute little puppy that sings "Jesus Loves Me" when you squeeze its paw, and a set of pj's with minnie mouse on them. (She loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.) She was laying around alot, but did come out in the dining room to have dinner with us. She's still in a decent amount of pain, but is taking alternating doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Evidentally the narcotics she'd been prescribed were doing more harm than good, so she didn't want to take them anymore. Her incision is healing pretty well too.. the doc ended up having to shave a 1" strip down the middle of her head to her neck to make the incision, but when her hair is down you can hardly tell. She's a trooper I tell ya. It won't be long til she's back to her energetic little self.

It was nice to spend time with our friends, just hanging out and relaxing. We even split a bottle of wine too, with dinner... the first time I'd drank any alcohol in awhile! I had a few glasses, but it just tasted so GOOD! It was an amish wine called "Roadhouse Red" from Breitenbach Winery in Ohio. Click *here* to check out their website. The wines are FANTASTIC... especially their Frost Fire and First Crush....and strawberry...and peach....and.... LOL. Ok, it's ALL good. I highly recommend it. I always visit there when my cousin and I go out to Sugarcreek to do some shopping. We love going out there to visit all the little country craft stores since we're all into that.

But anyway... I got off track there.

Now to today... I went to a Christmas program at the school a few of my nieces go to. It was so cute. I think the kids all ranged in age from 3-5, and it was ADORABLE. Some kids would forget their lines and look at the teacher in front and say, "What NOW?" and one little girl paused in between lines, so the audience started clapping, thinking she was finished. She goes, "I'm not done," then finished what she was saying. LOL It was too cute. One of my nieces has some lungs on her... you could hear her and one other girl plain as day.

Alyson LOVED the program. I was hoping she wouldn't be fussy, so I came prepared with her sippy cup and lots of crackers, which of course she finished it all. My mother-in-law and her husband took turns holding Alyson, and Aly would stand up on their laps. We were cracking up because whenever the audience clapped, Aly would get a huge grin on her face and start clapping her hands too. I can't wait until she's in school programs... she'll probably be hilarious. She'll be the little girl up on stage looking at the audience and saying, "I'm not DONE." LOL

So after the program we drove around for a little bit looking at Christmas lights. One neighborhood had houses COVERED in lights... it was like each house was competing with the next. One had music playing and everything. It made me think... what happens if you live in a neighborhood like that and you want to decorate but not THAT MUCH? I'd feel obligated to have to make my house look like the Griswold Family Christmas as well, wouldn't you?! That would suck if you only want to put a few things up... you'd be all out of place. But anyway... I wonder about stupid things like that. Oh... and another thing we saw was a house where the people decorated their car in the driveway!!! That's a first for me. Now I have truly seen it all. The guy (I'm assuming it's a guy that thought of this) had those string lights (the ones in the plastic tube, like you can wrap around tree trunks and stuff) strung on the bottom of his car and around all 4 tires. It was uh, cooooool. Yeah. The most annoying things I saw though (and this is, and always HAS been,my pet peeve every holiday season) are the people who string a bunch of lights together, and one random string blinks while the others stay on. Please don't do this. Like if you decorate your bushes and one string in the middle of the bush is blinking and the rest aren't. The people RIGHT next to us have that problem ALL OVER THEIR YARD, and I get to see it EVERYDAY. And they do it EVERY YEAR. lol

So there's the past few oh-so-exciting days in a nutshell. Tomorrow I need to go to Walmart...I need both groceries AND a few more toys. I don't feel like running to fifty different places. It's bad enough it's supposed to be raining all day tomorrow and I'll have to drag Alyson out in it.

More (hopefully exciting) updates soon. Possibly dealing with that HOUSE!! (But I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.)