Tales from the Love Shaque

Friday, December 23, 2011

Christmas in Rochester

Every year we walk up and down Main Street in nearby Rochester. They really go all out with the Christmas lights! It's also fun to people watch and to look in the shop windows.

We thought it would be crazy there tonight. There was a fair amount of people, but tolerable. Randy & I apparently have reached the age where we "stroll". People kept passing us, but we just walked along, holding hands & enjoying the lights.

The infamous upside down heart Santa!

O_o

This place is always good for something to see!

This year - elves with cameras!

Who is photobombing who?

I love this pic!

The Headless Hordes

Flying Vino!

On the other hand - there was a tragedy tonight. Laurie called me up & said that the Big Bad Wolf, aka Morgan, got hold of Angel's gingerbread house! I almost died laughing!! This led to a series of texts saying stuff like "State Farm called - your policy doesn't cover Big bad Wolf damage" and "should have built in a better neighborhood".

Before....

After...

Heehee!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Christmas Traditions

I found this on Regan's blog while particiapting in Friend Makin' Monday and had to do it - I love questionairres!

Christmas Traditions

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate? Eggnog! I love it both with or without rum! But I'm not opposed to hot chocolate, either.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or leave them under the tree? He has his elves wrap the presents.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Colors!!! We have LEDs on the tree for the first time this year, and altho it looks cool, I miss the chaser lights. Outside we have a strand of big old-school C-9 lights across the eaves, a trio of spiral trees and a collection of blowmolds.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No - no particular reason - just don't.

5. When do you hang your decorations up? Normally the weekend after Thanksgiving, but this year I ruptured a tendon in my calf the day before Thanksgiving and hubby was in Arkansas. So that messed up my whole season!!!

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (besides dessert)? We don't really do a big Christmas dinner. Snacks on C-mas Eve at one of my sister's houses. So probably fresh shrimp cocktail. Or sister Linda's white chili.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Nothing off the top of my head stands out - just spending time with family.

8. What is on your Christmas wish list? a laptop and maybe.....a Red Wing's Octopus pillowpet!

9. Do you open any gifts on Christmas Eve? Maybe 1. I usually give my daughter her new pajamas to open, but everything else is the day of.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Like a crazy person! LOL! I like "unique" items so we have ornaments ranging from Red Wing's hockey sticks to Tim Horton's coffee mugs to monster trucks to peacocks to stingrays wearing Santa hats.

11. Snow. Love it or dread it? I could take it or leave it. I do love watching it come down and when I'm out shovelling (no love there!) I like to stop and listen to it fall. I'm OK with driving in it - it's everyone else on the road that ticks me off!

12. Real tree of fake tree? Fake. our living room is so small that we leave off branches in the back lower layers so we can push it closer to the wall. The only downside to this is that the tree looks a bit sparce.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? This may not be my favorite, but it stands out the most...my sister & I have regifted the same Chia Pet for at least 15 years now. Crap - it's my year to get it!

14. What is the most important thing about Christmas for you? Just spend time with family, even if they do make me crazy.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Hmm, that requires thought.

16. What is your favorite tradition? We discovered this awesome little diner in downtown Rochester, so we go have dinner there and then walk up & down Main Street.

17. What tops your tree? An angel wearing a Razorback dress.

18. Do you prefer giving or receiving? both.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? My favorite funny song is Montgomery Gentry's Merry Christmas from the Family. Skip Ewing's Christmas Carol never fails to make me cry.

20. Candy Canes, yuck or yum? I'm not crazy about the traditional peppermint ones, but I go nuts over the chocolate mint ones!

21. Favorite Christmas Movie? I don't watch a whole lot of movies. Probably Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

22. What do you leave for Santa? Cookies & a Mexican Coke.

23. Do you have a Christmas morning tradition? All our old traditions changed since Dad passed away in 2009. We used to get up & open presents at our house, them meet over at Mom & Dad's for more gifts and then pancakes for breakfast. then we'd just hand out all day & visit until the ham dinner with all the fixin's. Now, every other year we have been going to Arkansas to spend with Randy's mom.

24. Do you prefer to shop online or at the mall? I avoid the mall the rest of the year, so there's no way I'm going at Christmas time! So mainly regular stores & online.

25. Christmas letter, or Christmas card? Cards.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Cookie weekend

The weekend started out slightly catastrophic....Friday my car seriously thought about dying on me. My service engine light came on half-way to work and it was running rather sluggishly. Same with after work, but it got me to my first stop in the list of errands. Then as I was going to my second stop, the car was rapidly losing power. Then once I stopped at a light, I could barely get it out of the intersection. I pulled over & called Randy. He checked my position on APRS (a ham radio geek thing - but useful in this case!) and told me to make sure I was in a safe area. So I pulled into a parking lot. And I just happened to be within sight of my next stop, so I walked over while waiting for Randy to get there. By the time I got back to the car, he had moved it under a light and was working on it.

We'd both forgotten that a couple years ago, there was a crack in a hose and he fixed it with electrical tape. The tape finally went. The guys in the shop at Pep Boys had no idea what that part was & we feared it was part of the emissions system = dealer part = big $$$! But luckily it was only a $12 part and easily fixed. Whew!!!

Saturday I felt the need to go to Garden Ridge. This guy felt the need to come home with me. He's going to ride around for another couple days until I get this LED light show tree that I've been looking for since last year - and finally found! They're both going to be in the yard before Christmas. So it'll only be for a couple days - it still makes me happy!!!

Anyway, I plan to go back to Garden Ridge the day after Christmas and grab a few more toy soldiers to create a battalion in the front yard. They had a big selection, I hope they still do!

Then I played elf and wrapped all the Christmas presents that we had at the time. Somehow, wrapping your own present isn't fun! Randy is such a guy. But I was good & didn't peek.

Sunday was a fun day with the family. We went out to Laurie's and made what seemed like thousands of cookies. When you make so many you get bored decorating them - you've made too many!

Laurie & Angel hard at work.

Some of our cookies were labelled "demented".

I don't understand why. I think he looks happy!

I believe this one says "Oo my eye".

I'm sure there was a story behind this, too.

That's a Hershey's Kiss on its face.

Angel's Happy Rainbow Gingerbread house.

Made for the boy she stalks up north, Ben.

It was going to be Ben & Clayton but she realized that would be sort of wrong.

Lisa's house, prior to her biting an arm off a gingerbread man, lying him at the front door and sprinkling liberally with red sugar. She also made a yellow police line to rope off the scene.