Christmas Cookie Goodness

My family didn't particularly have a lot of Christmas traditions but one that we did every year for as long as I can remember is to decorate Christmas cookies. One year our cookies kept breaking so we decided to use it to our advantage and made "Picasso cookies" with the pieces glued together with frosting. Once that happened we decided to get really creative and made alien cookies and so forth. We were strange. Today my mom had Jeff and I over for a Christmas cookie reprise of our growing up tradition. We made some fun ones:

Jeff made the Sasquatch (that we decided looks like a monkey), and the cyclopes in tighty whiteys.

He made the salmon on the left, the stick figure man, and the "do I look like a duck?" cookie for Joy.

This is self explanatory :)

This was at the end when my mom and my creative juices were pretty tapped out. Her red hots man is very happy but my raisin man is miserable. :)

I made the Adam and Eve cookies.

I think this is my husbands masterpiece :) Pretty impressive skeleton, eh?

I made these for my sister in honor of our previous alien cookies. And the people are, if you can't guess, Mulder and Scully of course.

Fun Times in Sacramento

Our trip north went pretty well. It really helps a lot to stop halfway and visit friends. We stopped in Sacramento to be with Mary and Erik for two days before continuing home. It was so much fun! I really miss both of them a TON. Erik was done with his residency for the month so we all got to spend the days together. We went to the Sacramento Zoo which, despite its size, is a pretty impressive place. We all really appreciated how close you can get to the animals. I've never seen a live hyena, anteater or snow leopard before. I took some pictures with my phone that aren't exactly great quality, but are fun anyway:

That night we went driving to a neighborhood near Folsom that puts on a light display every year. It was crazy. I took a bunch of pictures but again, the quality sucks.

Jeff just gave me this...

Don't know how we missed 4 and 5, but this is a GREAT album. Jeff just gave it to me. We had such a good night last night. We went to the Summit House, which is incredible all decked out at Christmas time. We had a really hard time getting a decent picture of us. I think we were both just tired and mellow that night, so these aren't that great, but here's a few anyway.

My camera refuses to take a non-blurry picture, but here it is folks. I've permanently scarred my body for all earthly eternity. I hope my husband is happy! :) This was another birthday present for him, one which I did on the sly, and which I think he never actually expected me to do, even though we'd talked about it.

It's pretty low on my back and my jeans actually obscure all but the top, so it's fairly well hidden unless I choose to expose it. So far, everyone I've shown has approved, even my mother :).

It's depressing Monday

This is how I feel today: http://www.hallmark.com/ECardWeb/ECV.jsp?a=2075552652883M229927320Y&product_id=
This morning sucked. I hope you all have a better Monday than me and Hoops.

I basically got chewed out all day for doing things wrong or not as quickly as people liked, or not being able to do them at all because I'm not trained yet. And we were busy. Very busy.
My only consolation was that the cafeteria guy gave me free bacon with my breakfast. That almost made things better. That and it was my last day of work for 10 days. 7 days in a row is too much.

My Birthday Killings (figuratively)

My birthday was a few weeks ago and I got a lot of really cool stuff and just wanted to share: Jeff gave me some sci fi books which, so far, have been good, and a cd that I love and listen to 24/7. My dad got me an LL Bean gift card with which I bought a fishing pole (YAY!), my mom & Rick got me a B&N gift card which I used to buy a few Mercer Mayer books I'm missing in my collection. Jack and Deb got my airline ticket to visit CA people. I'm debating a video game with my Target card from Ryan and Rachelle. My sister made me a journal and Greg & Angela bought me 3000, yes thousand Magic cards.... So that's me in a nutshell in case you didn't know: being with friends, books, video games, magic, outdoors and poetry.

My love of fairy tales

Some of my best childhood memories are the times my sister and I would build forts to read our fairy tales. I remember climbing in amongst the pillows and blankets and reading "The Little Mermaid" with the flashlight, bawling our eyes out at the tragic ending. The passion for fantasy has not dwindled, and my sister and I are always on the lookout for new pictures books to add to our collection. A few years ago we discovered the incredible, and fairly unknown talent of Mercer Mayer to capture our favorite tales with his beautiful pictures. Yes, the Little Critters illustrator did Beauty and the Beast and many others. I was roaming online tonight and ran across his website. These pictures are a sampling of the pages from Pam and my most cherished books. Isn't he just incredible?

Well hello hello

I'm a little goofy for lack of sleep right now. Just got off my shift and decided I didn't really want to go to bed. I WAS going to go grocery shopping since I've been living off of granola bars and bananas for the last five days, but they don't open when I get off of work. LAME. However, last night/this morning was my "Friday" thank goodness. I have until next Monday off, which I'm going to hopefully use efficiently to get done the stuff that has been desperately piling up since I went to CA three weeks ago. Sigh. Can't I have 48 hour days in which I can work my 10 hour shift, sleep 8 hours and still get done what I need to?
Otherwise, I'm good. I have the house to myself for a while since Joy is out east visiting friends. It's slightly weird and very quiet. I was actually able to get WOW downloaded this past weekend, so I'm hoping to play some of that real soon, which is an excellent distraction.
I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving. Mine is going to be shared with three of my families (my mom's, my step-family, and the in-laws minus my husband), which will hopefully be fun.
Ok, maybe i am kinda tired. I'm going to try and get some sleep. I've been getting lots of sleep during the day, but man, I have the strangest dreams....
More when I'm actually rested.

Trying to alter my schedule

So, I'm back in California again. I'm staying at a "hotel" with Jeff down in Long Beach and trying to adjust to staying up late. It hasn't been working out so well. Part of the problem is that there is only so much entertainment I can choke down in one day, and what else is there to do on vacation? I'm used to a very particular structure to my day and throwing that to the wind for two solid weeks is a bit stressful. I had Jeff bring me some computer games for a change of distraction. He's at work right now. It really is great to be together again. It's strange the things you take for granted: having someone to wake up to and look at every day, someone who can share all your weird thoughts and make you laugh, an extra set of hands, someone telling you that you look nice. I miss all those things and more when he's not around. But anyway, we're having a good time and the weather is perfect. It's strange not to have to wear a coat when I go outside. Portland has been in the low 50s, high 40s since Halloween so I'm enjoying all the sun I can get. More later.

Me, Myself and Boredom

I am so astonishingly bored right now I don't even know what to do with myself. I'm restless... so I figured I'd make a list of the top 10 places I'd like to be right at this exact moment (with my husband as my #1 companion, of course) ... not in any particular order:



1. Gatecrasher, Sheffield, UK. I could kick myself for letting this opportunity pass by. What were we thinking?

2. Sitting on the beach in Los Cabos drinking a Sol staring at the bonfire with my feet dug into the sand, thinking about the next day's activities of snorkeling at Lover's Beach and eating a fabulous dinner with crab tacos.

3. Drinking a peach almond tea latte from the Tea Zone with a huge pile of books in Powell's City of Books cafe in downtown Portland.





4. In Alaska with my sister and her family.

5. Bar hopping and bowling with my friend Stacy and whoever else wanted to tag along.

6. On the roof of the Griffith Park Observatory with college buddies, reading scary stories and goofing off.

7. Road trip to nowhere... well preferably a lot of state parks with good hiking trails. I'm particularly inclined toward White Sands, New Mexico right now.





8. Camping in Eastern Oregon, near Steens Mountain.






9. Ballynahinch Castle, Eastern Ireland then on to the Cliffs of Moher and the Giants Causeway.





10. At the Sey residence with the gang.

If I HAVE to exercise...

This park is only a quarter mile from my house and contains a 3 mile loop that I love to walk a few times a week. A couple of weeks ago I was so taken with the colors I decided I wanted to take some pictures to show you all how lovely my little corner of Oregon is. Unfortunately, I took the pics a bit later in than I was hoping and these colors aren't as stunning as I'd hoped. It didn't help that it was really overcast on my walk this day. Too bad i don't have an IPod or something... Chicane would be perfect with this view.... Enjoy.