I love my husband!

         I seriously do love him very much. I am not just saying it. I could go on and on about how wonderful and amazing he is and how much I love him. Not to mention how I could go on about the reasons why all that is true. Needless to say I love him and I am blessed. I know all this. We had a good Christmas. DH had to go into work for swing shift and didn't get off until early this morning since most of graveyard called in. So he is still sleeping. How was all of your Christmas's? Did you get something you just love or did you do a gift free Christmas? DH got us tickets to see Shen Yun in January. I am so excited it should be so much fun. It's out of town but we will stay with my SIL and she agreed to watch the boys while we are at the show.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

May God bless the soldiers and their families that won't be home this Christmas! Remember them in your prayers! They are the reason we are home with ours! I hope all of your Christmas's are merry and bright.

Ink drawings..

      I have 10 days off from work after I get off today (hopefully early). No I am not going on vacation the lab I work for closes until the new year so I will have plenty of free time on my hands. My plans are stay home with my boys and play. :) Along with baking and some knitting. I have a few sewing projects I want to tactual. Now if the weather improves and it doesn't snow anymore we might make a short 2 or 3 day trip to see my uncle and my SIL. I also plan on doing some ink drawing/sketches that I will then frame and put up in my guest room/project room. It was DH idea. I did a doodle yesterday and he suggested I do a bigger one and frame it. So I though why not do a few and use it in the guest room. So wish me luck with my projects. I hope you all have a MERRY CHRISTMAS on Saturday.

4 more days...

    then it is CHRISTMAS..  Anyway our boss had a Christmas party last Saturday, it was nice. Tomorrow we are having a little Christmas party at work, with a "white elephant" gift exchange of sorts. I am assigned to bring something "sweet" for this party. My boss requested a blueberry pie so tonight I am making a blueberry pie. This is my first attempt at blueberry but I've made lots of other pies and a few berry pies, just not blueberry. I used Christmas cookie cutters to make a decorative top "crust". It's in the oven now baking and since I didn't know if it would turn out (If it doesn't I have a back up plan for a different dessert (not another blueberry though)) I took a picture of it before sticking it in the oven.

wah-la not perfect but I think it will be cute

   I am glad to be ready for Christmas. No last minute Christmas shopping for this girl. We had too take all the presents from under the tree. The boys kept sneaking them to open them partway to see if it was their gifts. Now they are in the back room until Christmas. It snowed again over the weekend so we made a snowman and a snow puppy.

Day 9789

Our tree decorated with the help of our 2 and now 4 year old.

           I don't know where you all are on your Christmas planning and gifting and all but we here are done.Well almost 100% done. We're done shopping at least. Thank goodness for that. I am not a big fan of crowds and waiting. Especially together. Our tree is decorated and while it might not be the tree I envision in my mind it is the tree that my darling little boys helped decorate. They of course want to open the gifts under said tree now (even if they aren't theirs). They even decorated some salt dough ornaments for the tree also. Saturday I went to a friend's and we made lotion bars and decorated some salt dough ornaments (which I said I would credit to my children if anybody asked, lol) and then I brought some home for the boys to decorate. I might do a post on the lotion bars later once I get the pictures from my friend, unless she does a post on it and then I will probably give you all the link to it. It was fun and we were there for only like 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Which isn't too bad for 5 batches and breakfast and ornaments.. At least in my opinion.
            I decorated the mantle also but I will not be posting a picture of it on here. At least not this year (and hopefully next year we won't be living here). So now that we are 11 days from Christmas and tomorrow is my father's birthday and the following day is SNOWBOARDING. Have I mentioned how much fun I find snowboarding. Even though I have gone much, nor am I much good at it I enjoy it very much. This coming Saturday my boss is having Christmas party at his house. Originally we were going to be out of town and therefore unable to attend but unfortunately ( I really wanted to see my friend up in northern Washington) it didn't end up working out. So it appears we will be able to attend.
             Also we are attempting to decided what we are going to do for our vacation this late winter/early spring 2011. DH is leaving it up to me (unless he decides that isn't the wisest decision).This of course will be a cash only vacation. In which I mean we will not be using credit of any type. Obviously we probably won't being using cash in hand only, but cash in bank via debit cards. To me this doesn't seem weird or odd. I have read and I follow blogs that discuss money and debt and the like. I do not normally do that here. Though I don't really devote this blog to any one thing, well except maybe life. Okay back on topic. I have never gone on a vacation where I paid for it in part or in whole by credit. Don't get me wrong I have used credit in my life, I bought my house via a V.A. Loan which when we sale we will make a hefty profit even in the housing downturn. I bought my car with an auto loan through my credit union. Yes yes I know I know it's better if you pay cash for it yaddah yaddah. I am okay with having these loans. I am even okay with having a credit card or two. As long as you can be responsible about it. By no means am I saying I perfect of I have it down. I am not and I don't. I have made mistakes and probably will make mistakes in the future (hopefully different ones then I made in the past or I didn't learn anything). But we are relatively young (26 if you must know) so we are still learning and figuring things out. Not to mention trying to find a mutually agreeable ground when it comes to what we want to do with out money. I say this all because in figuring out what we want to do for our vacation I might mention it on here. Not to mention references that might be made later on. So I mention it now when I have very few readers (so later if somebody asks about it later I can say see day 9789 hehehe.. okay not really).  Also so nobody who stumbles onto my blog will lecture me about the importance of savings. Trust me I know the importance. I have seen first hand what happens when something life changing happens and makes it so you can't work and have multiple medical bills (because trust me no insurance covers 100% of anything and some things cost an unbelievable amount of money even with insurance) and you don't have much or any savings. Or when somebody dies and doesn't have a savings left and no life insurance. It is expensive to bury a loved one not to mention hard enough on it's own. In times like these it's better to have a strong savings then having to but stuff like that on credit or depend on others to help you.

     Okay moving on to happier less depressing things.. Vacations.. I am truly a big kid at heart at least when it comes to some things so one of the things on my possible vacation plan is a little over a week in southern California at Disney and the like. I heart rides, rides the go up high, rides the spin, that drop, that splash and so on and so forth. I don't think there has been a ride I have ridden that I wouldn't and haven't ridden again. DH isn't as big on rides as I am (a lot of adults probably aren't) but he loves me and will humor me, plus he loves roller coasters so if he gets to go on some of those and we go somewhere that is warm and mainly sunny he will be happy.  Which brings us to option 2 a cruise to somewhere warm and tropical. Beyond that I am toying with the idea of going somewhere warm and tropical sans the cruise. We went on a cruise in the beginning of 2009 and we had a blast. So I am not against another cruise. Option 4 is to go to Europe and visit my sister. Though I am not sure that's the best time of the year to visit there.

A picture of another cruise ship from our Mexico cruise in 2009

I have a problem...

       
                Okay maybe not a problem but issues. I enjoy the holiday season, I like finding that gift for people I love that I think they will truly love and enjoy. And I love the feeling you get when you give it to them and the light up with happiness. No; this is not my issue. I am crazy have a little issue with being a control freak needy when it comes to knowledge, any knowledge but worse so when it directly effects me. What that doesn't sound so bad? Okay, it sounds horrible, especially when you grasp what that truly means. It being the holiday season and with Christmas coming up some of my loved ones is buying me gifts. *Gasp* the horrors. Yeah I know I am not getting any sympathy from you. I manage to stamp down my insatiable need to know everything for the most part on a normal basis. Unfortunately if say like wonderful amazing DH bought me a gift and then tells me "I found a gift I think you'll really enjoy/like/love or any other adjective" I then need to know what that item is. So I proceed to guess and try to get him to tell me. I even offer to tell him his gift in exchange. This never works. Ever. Argh. Darn him. I would be better off if I was left in the dark until I was giving said gift so I do not have to obsess over it for more than the amount of time it takes me to open the gift.

          I now have the knowledge that he bought me something but not the knowledge of what it is. Sure I could find out what store he bought it from or I could go search for it. But that smacks of unfair and wrong. So I will wait and suffer and nag negotiate. I do try to keep it to the minimum, especially since I know he won't tell me anything. Sometimes I think he tells me because he enjoys watching me suffer guess and negotiate to find out. Okay probably in reality he is just excited and wants to share that with me. Alright I just wanted to rant for a bit. I am all better now. Really I am. I promise. What you don’t believe me? You still think I am crazy have issues? Yeah yeah you are probably right but at the moment I am no obsessing about it. And for the record I know I am blessed and lucky. I have a wonderful sweet amazing husband who loves me.  I just have issues. :)