Merry Christmas!!!

some pics for Mom and Dad's enjoyment...the rest of you can enjoy them too, but I know they will want to see what we are up to :)

Kaylinn and Leia opening thier stocking - Mishu is overseeing from the sofa

Leia is in love with her new toy

Kaylinn is also in love with her new toy

apparently everyone is in love with their new toy :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Where have all the 80s Hair Bands Gone?

Last night we found them! And they now play Christmas music...albeit rock style :) Nicole and Lee took Sandor and I to last night's Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert for our Christmas present. It was quite impressive. I am now obsessed with the electric violin, as well as the laser lights, but mainly the electric violin. Apparently I had totally missed the existence of the electric violin, but I sure love it. In case you've never heard their music, you can find examples here. It is a strange mix of rock music, classical and Christmas songs. But it works. And to add to the experience they have lights and fire and smoke and snow, and lots of long haired guitar players, oh and about 7 vocalists, and 2 keyboard players, and 2 cellists and 5 violinists (in addition to the electric one). Quite the experience!

the laser lights - as taken from Sandor's cell phone

the electric violin - also taken from Sandor's cell phone

some nice rock band hair :) - this pic complements of the internet

Cleaning Day

There is this thing about moms that I have found. For some reason, they can clean the exact same spot of the world as me and yet theirs is cleaner. When we moved into the condo my mom came down and helped me 'pre-clean' everything - specifically the kitchen and bathroom. She literally made them look like different rooms, it was impressive. So, when I was cleaning this morning getting ready for Christmas day festivities to be held at our house, I noticed that the kitchen floor was looking a bit grungy as it were, and I decided that I would attempt to clean it in the mom fashion of cleaning. Now, don't get me wrong, I do clean the kitchen pretty much every other week, but actual down on the floor, hands and knees scrubbing is few and far between at this house - so this was a cleaning event worth marking. But I have to say it turned out quite well! The brillo pad was a little worse for wear, and my arm is a bit sore, but the kitchen is looking clean enough to eat off the floor :)

I Spy a Christmas Card

So, most everyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for cute pictures, which is why I love the new Christmas card pictures that are a) easy to make last minute for those of us who forget we didn't have Christmas cards, b) relatively cheap considering you've got a message and a picture in one and c) you get to see how cute everyone's kids and/or pets are :) The one downfall is that I'm used to being able to write something on the inside of my cards, so I miss getting and giving messages from people even though I like getting the pictures. So it was with great delight that I received Jeff and Anne's Christmas card this year (pictured above) - and do not be surprised those of you reading this who receive Christmas cards from me if I copy this excellent idea in the future. They took a picture of a bunch of different things that signified some highlights from the year and then wrote a letter explaining each of them. The funniest probably being the red zero which signified the number of nights Leo has slept through the night so far this year (he was born in January, so it was rough sleeping this year!). It was brilliant - and fun to read and look at!

Disney Wonderland

Ok, it's about time I get some cruise pictures on here. I'm enjoying getting ready for Christmas, so I've been ignoring things such as blog, paying bills, work...you know the normal things :) Just kidding, I paid my bills and am going to work, I've just been spending more time putting together elf pictures than doing work (www.elfyourself.com) But, what is Christmas if not a time you can have fun rather than work and be serious!

So right, back to the cruise. It was spectacular. I really never thought I would be a cruise person, and I still don't think I'd be a cruise person if my goal of a trip was to travel, but if the goal is to sit around and relax and eat good food - cruise it is! And when you take your mom and your sisters that also helps in the fun department! One of my friends from grad school was getting married and invited Sandor and I to the wedding and cruise, but since Sandor can't get paid leave from work mom, Brandy, Nikole and I went. It was a Disney cruise, so our ship was full of Disney-ness - walk through a Mickey head to get on the ship...

...the kids pool was a Mickey...

...the hands of the elevator were Micky arms...

...and all the characters were there - which Nikole was VERY excited about!

But, despite the fact it was a Disney cruise there was a TON of stuff to do even if you weren't under the age of 15 :) Each night we were greeted by a cute little towel animal and a 4 page sheet of events for the next day. Since our family is not known for it's ability to relax we did end up taking advantage of a number of those events, but we did a good job of forcing ourselves to have some down time. We took advantage of this awesome 'Rainforest Spa' thing where for a whole day you could use this room filled with different saunas and eucalyptus showers. We also enjoyed Bahama Mamas in the hot tub and sat on our balcony overlooking the totally empty ocean around us.
And one night we went to a martini tasting where they let you have these cute little martinis so you could taste different kinds. My favorite is still the chocolate one :)

Our first stop was Nassau where we went on a Discover Atlantis excursion. It was quite fun - Atlantis has this huge outdoor aquarium that you walk around and below and through.

my favorite was Zeus the manta ray!

I had always heard people say the food on cruises was good, but I definitely did not believe it was as good as it was! Each night you were assigned a different restaurant and there was a theme. Plus you could get food at any time of the day or night, and let me tell you the french fries that we had at 3:00 were hot and delicious, not soggy and gross like they were sitting around since lunch. The first night we ate at the French restaurant and the theme was just cruise casual. One of our servers was new and so the head server person kept telling him to do things. My mom was getting over being sick and so she had been carrying around this bottle of water everywhere she went - including to dinner where you were going to get a glass of water, but you can never figure mom out :) At one point the head waiter told our assistant waiter to pour the bottle of water my mom had sitting on the table into Brandy's glass I guess thinking that Brandy was picky about the kind of water she drank. But then my mom didn't want Brandy to drink the water because she was sick but we didn't want to make the poor guy feel bad for just doing what he was told, so we had to switch out Nikole's empty glass with the sick water glass since Nikole was drinking soda, and so 40 seconds after he filled the glass with the bottle it looked like Brandy had drank all the water and the bottle was gone. We probably confused him more than anything ;)

The next night we were at the Italian restaurant and it was Pirate night. Everyone got these bandanas at their plates so we had a bit of fun with the camera. Nikole is not one to enjoy having her photo taken, but she played along in the end.

The second island we went to was the Disney island (Castaway Cay). It was really nice because we were the only cruise ship there so the beach was pretty empty and you didn't have to worry about dodging people selling things and going through customs. Jen and Dennis got married in the morning and then we spent the afternoon riding bikes around the island and laying on the beach/water. That night, fittingly we were at the Island restaurant so we got some delicious food to finish off our day.


Not a bad way to spend a December weekend, not bad at all!

Winter Picnic

For whatever reason I was in the mood for egg salad today - problem being I had no eggs, let alone egg salad. Thankfully my sweet husband had off work today and agreed to 1) go to the store for eggs and bread, 2) boil the eggs, and 3) bring said eggs, bread, and the other necessary items for egg salad over to work so I could make us lunch. Since apparently the whole winter weather thing was just a joke we decided to have a picnic in the 70 degree weather outside! It is a beautiful day and it's hard to beat the view from behind my building where the picnic tables are...

Kaylinn joined us and while she was a bit confused about the whole boat basin idea, she enjoyed sniffing the grass and rocks and watching the birds and bugs. She was amazing well behaved and didn't bark at even one person! Way to go Kaylinn!

The egg salad preparation was a little interesting since I was doing it without a knife and on a table in the wind, but all turned out well and the sandwiches were DELICIOUS! And now I don't have to live for a week craving egg salad (if I don't eat what I'm in the mood for that is all I want to eat for weeks!).

Leia's St. Nicholas Present

In Hungary they celebrate St. Nicholas Day by getting presents in their boots on Dec 6th. Since Sandor has always done this we decided we would do both boots and Christmas stockings (since that is what I've always done growing up) each year - Sandor is in charge of the boots and me the stockings. We celebrated St. Nicholas Day a bit late this year since I was in the Bahamas, but one of the presents in my boot was a laser pointer, which I've been looking to get for Leia for some time. As you'll see in the video she was quite enamored by it - and Kaylinn even checked it out a few times (Kaylinn got her own present of a dog whistle...we'll see how that works).

Florida Toll Roads

I remember being annoyed by toll roads when I lived in Florida, but I had forgotten just HOW annoying they are! For some reason Florida thinks it is more efficient to set up toll plazas throughout the road and make everyone stop to pay rather than say setting up the toll plaza at each exit and just paying when you exit based on when you entered. I really didn't think it was a difficult idea to grasp, but apparently it is. So, for instance when I lived in Ft. Lauderdale I had to stop 4 times on the way down to the Keys to pay 75 cents each time. Oh, that's the other annoying thing - it's always change and honestly, how much change does one person have?! So, last weekend I returned to the lovely Florida to leave for a cruise (I'll do a post about that gloriously relaxing adventure later - I have to catch up at work first!). On the way down there was only one 75 cent toll on the very last road I took and thankfully I actually had change in my car so it was not problem. On the way back however I took a different road because I was dropping my sister off at the airport, so I ended up needing more toll money. Now since I had 9 dollars in my purse I wasn't too worried, but then at the first toll plaza I remembered the absurdity of tolls in FL so I started getting a bit concerned that I wouldn't have enough change and since some of the plazas didn't have people working you occasionally could not actually get change. I went through toll plaza number one fine depositing my 75 cents and moving on. I roll up on toll plaza number 2 thinking I needed 25 cents because I had seen a sign that said - toll plaza ahead - 25 cents (generally a good indication). What I didn't realize was I was looking at the sign that indicated how much a toll was for the people exiting and therefore paying a toll 14 feet before I did. Apparently in that 14 feet I incurred 25 cents more of tolls, however I failed to realize this because I was attempting to find 25 cents in change throughout my car and wallet and didn't see the second sign. So I pull into the plaza, throw my 25 cents in and look up at the light to make sure it turns green. The light however, stays red. So I look back at the change thing thinking maybe it didn't count all my nickels and I see it says '25 cents paid' so I'm totally confused as to what is happening. Meanwhile 2 more cars pull up behind me and so I'm feeling bad that I am not moving, but the red light is not changing. I then look back at the change thing and realize there is a little sign that says 50 cents. Problem being I literally used all my change to scrounge up the 25 cents - I have a total of 2 pennies in my car in addition to dollar bills which are useless in a change counter. So at this point, I have no idea what to do - there are cars behind me so I can't back up and go in the line with a change person (they actually had one here, but me thinking I was good with my 25 cents didn't go in that lane because there was a line), and I technically can't move forward because I didn't pay my toll. So, finally I make the decision to drive forward and then figure it out without these poor people sitting in line behind me. I hear the toll plaza take a picture of my license plate and a nice little buzzer goes off, and I pull over to the far left lane and get out. However, I now realize there are 4 lanes of traffic between me and the toll person and all the people going through the lanes nearest to me are the people not waiting for change so there isn't much time to run across traffic. After weighing the importance of me not being hit by a car outside a toll plaza in Florida vs. the relative unimportance of receiving a small ticket in the mail, I decide to continue my journey paying my stupid tolls all the rest of the way. In the end I paid a total of 4.25 at 4 toll plazas and moved on changeless towards South Carolina. I sure hope Florida puts my 4.25 and whatever the ticket I'll be getting to good use!

Ornament Discrimination

My mom has this thing with discrimination toward inanimate objects - it especially intensifies at Christmas. She is highly discriminatory toward cookies that are not perfect (I wasn't allowed to eat 'perfect' cookies until I moved out of the house and therefore received them in the mail and thus they were considered a present) and even bread and dried fruit get culled through. However, possibly even more severe is her discrimination towards Christmas ornaments. Now, if her discrimination was based on sentimentality I would understand, but it's totally based on looks. Every year her and Nikole have a battle over where on the tree Nikole's new ornament she made at school will go. In the morning Nikole moves it to front and center, towards the end of the day when my mom sees it she moves it to back and bottom - it's a never ending cycle. She doesn't even like putting the first ornament my dad and her got for their first Christmas on the tree because she says it's ugly. So each year we battled to get the 'ugly' ornaments we knew and loved on the tree before it was full. It actually is quite entertaining. So when she handed my sister and I a bag of ornaments each last year we looked through them spotting some of our favorite ugly ones which she has forever disowned from her box of ornaments. There were a few however that we had never seen before. We determined that apparently these were SO ugly they were not even allowed to see the light of day to be decided as ugly and pushed aside. So, my sister and I vowed to put these on our tree this year in an effort to make them feel a little better about themselves. And thus, I have a ridiculously ugly gold bird hanging on my tree. A gold bird that apparently has been in the box of ornaments for 20 odd years and is just now making his debut onto the Christmas world. So let's hear it for the poor guy - you'd be a little nervous too :)Sadly enough I realized I was doing the same thing this year - and I have maybe been known to force Sandor to eat a few cookies so I didn't have to throw them away but I wouldn't give them to people...oh well, I'll blame it on the genes! :)

Get Ready for Christmas!

AHHH, December is here! To get ourselves in the Christmas spirit (well, to get Sandor in the Christmas spirit, I don't need any help) we decorated the house this weekend. I love opening up the chest I keep all the decorations in because thanks to the candles it smells like Christmas when you open it! We started with a little new decoration...Kaylinn HATED it, but whatever it was cute :)

Shortly after that picture was taken she jumped off the bed, shook her head really hard to make the bows fall off and ran away. I can't really blame her :) She warmed back up to the Christmas-ness however and hung out on the bed while I was deciding what to hang up this year.

And then in grand puppy form even watched as Sandor set the tree up. Notice her early Christmas present around her neck...a barking collar. We've come to the end of screaming for her to stop barking, the barking collar is now in charge. poor Kaylinn.

Up next was the fireplace. Some Christmas stockings, a little nativity and a few candle and we are looking very merry.

I even found an angel to hang over the nativity!

Now the next set of pictures is for my mom. Probably everyone else in the world is not interested in seeing the decorations all over my house, but I know she will be - so here you go mom. The dining room...

The kitchen...
And even the bathroom...
And finally the tree! Sandor was an excellent sport and took a break from homework to help me with the tree. He in fact did all the lights, christmas balls, and lots of ornaments...

Leia was a bit interested by the whole experience...even Mishu came over for a sniff...
The final product!

Puppy Days

So I realized in my post-Thanksgiving 'good God there is a lot to do at work' haze that I never put up a Thanksgiving blog post. In perusing my pictures to decide what all to write about I realized that I have two categories of pictures - 1) people cooking and 2) dogs. Now while Thanksgiving is definitely all about eating...hence the many pictures of cooking...that's not very interesting blog material. Thus, we shall instead peruse some pictures of dogs, since they are far cuter :)

The drive to Brandy and John's house, which we shall be refer to from this point forward as the 'drive that shall not be named' began with me sitting in a traffic jam that took 2 hours for me to move the 4 miles between the first Summerville and the last Summerville exit. Leaving me an additional 4 hours to actually GET to my destination. It was not a pretty experience. But, I did in fact get there, puppy in tow. Sandor drove up that night as well but separate from me because he had to work that night, and work on Friday (can't really ask off work on Black Friday when you work retail), and my parents drove down the next day because my dad had to get his ankle checked and his stitches taken out.

So, the next morning dawns, we allow the dogs to go outside and play because they are annoyingly excited about life together. Dudley has a boundary collar so that keeps him in range of the house and Kaylinn generally stays in the same general region because her purpose for being outside is in fact to play and he can only go so far, so they settle for near the house playing.

Dudley and Kaylinn's idea of a good time together -
looks uncomfortable to me, but they love it

Previous to the boundary collar, however, Dudley kindly showed Kaylinn where the small creek that runs behind their house is located. Apparently Kaylinn remembered said creek and decided to go play in it real quick and then come back to wrestle Dudley because this is what she looked like when we went outside to check on them...

Therefore into the hose went the two dogs so we could head out to go climbing. The pups went along with us and enjoyed the hike up to the climbing walls.

And while at the climbing walls they enjoyed chewing on some sticks, which are apparently very tasty in dog world.

They are so cute, I just had to put more pictures of them on here...


oh and since this was Sandor's first try at tackling a vertical wall, I figured I should put that on here too...he did quite well in fact

Mom, Dad and Nikole arrived that night and the next day we got up ready to cook! Brandy and I took care of the pumpkin pie, my mom took care of the turkey and stuffing, and then we sat around for the better portion of the day while the turkey cooked before we started up the rest of the dinner. Having realized that every time we left Kaylinn and Dudley out of the house Kaylinn ran straight for her little mud pile of fun we devised a scheme to tie her to to the car.

Problem being she would get herself all wrapped up around things because she wasn't used to being tied up. We looked out and saw her sitting next to the one bush looking all cute and I went to get my camera to take a picture, at which point I realized she wasn't sitting there looking cute, she was all wrapped up in the tree and couldn't move :)

I realized in all this I never mentioned the poor Belle. She had a rough week of it last week - nearly meeting her maker. However, she rallied through it and thanks to some antibiotics and pain pills she was her normal begging self. Man that dog can beg with the best of them!

Dad hung around the house for most of the time since he couldn't really do anything with the broken ankle (it's been a rough few weeks in the Walker household between ankles being broken, dogs unable to walk, and cars breaking). The pups took breaks from their wrestling to keep him company though.

And then back to wrestling they would go, which would then instigate us putting them back outside to wrestle where they can't knock things over. We did go out and get a run line for Kaylinn so that she wasn't tied up where she could wrap herself around as much. They seemed to enjoy it much more.
They could also dig in this area since there was less grass and more dirt. Although they always insist on digging the same hole.

My caption for this photo: What? We didn't do it.

It was a great weekend, all topped off with a great meal. And now it's finally time for Christmas!! I LOVE Christmas! And I am not in any way joking. It is absolutely my favorite holiday of all time. This is the first year I won't be going home to my parent's house for Christmas so this weekend I'm decorating the condo to get in the spirit...and maybe I'll even start cookies :)