Holiday Season

I’m really looking forward to turkey this week. We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We’re going to have 2 turkeys this week, one at the Jones’, and one at our place. Mmm. I posted before about inviting Kelly & Roman here for Thanksgiving, but Roman contacted me weeks ago to say he was taking Kelly to Prague for her birthday gift. They went this week. She really wants to come here soon, so maybe once she returns we can look at our calendars and figure something out.

Christmas is coming fast, and I’m pretty excited. There are aspects of the holiday I don’t enjoy (going to the post office, and other stuff I won’t mention), but let’s go with the positive. I enjoy working on our annual Christmas letter we send out. I enjoy wearing my Christmas clothes. I love getting Christmas cards. I love the lights. Most of all, I love being able to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. The songs singing about His birth, His life, His reign.

Roland posted on his blog a song list for a Christmas mix CD he made, so I thought I’d post the song list for the Christmas CD I made last year.

Go Tell It On The Mountain/Amen – Phillips, Craig & Dean
You Make It Feel Like Christmas – Neil Diamond
Jingle Jangle – Blue Hawaiians
Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord – Boney M
The Night Before Christmas (The Devil In The Kitchen) – Ashley MacIsaac
The Marvelous Toy – Irish Rovers
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan
Feliz Navidad – Jose Feliciano
This Christmas – Harry Connick Jr
Last Christmas – Wham!
Jingle Bells (from The Simpsons)– Robert Goulet
Do You Hear What I Hear – Out Of Eden
Silver & Gold – Burl Ives
Twelve Days Of Christmas – Bob & Doug McKenzie
Blue Christmas – Johnny Cash
O Come Emmanuel – Michelle Negron Bueno
Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Paul Bellows & Stew Kirkwood
Mistletoe & Holly – Frank Sinatra
O Holy Night – Josh Groban (my favorite version of this song. Will give you chills)
Little Drummer Boy – Jars Of Clay

I may try to make another Christmas CD this year. I always like to add one or 2 Christmas CDs to my collection.

Here are pictures from Geoff hanging out lights. I was anti-icicle lights (because I think they are overdone, and everyone has them), but we compromised and got mutli-colored ones. It’s hard to see the house, but hopefully you get the idea.

Thanks to all you guys for saying you miss us too. It meant a lot. I guess it makes the times we see each other more special, but I could use that specialness more frequently, y’know? πŸ™‚ All in good time.

I’ll close with a quote from one of the ultimate guilty pleasure movies, Bring It On.

Sparky: I am a choreographer. That’s what I do. You are cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded. What you do is a tiny, pathetic subset of dancing. I will attempt to turn your robotic routines into poetry, written with the human body. Follow me, or perish, sweater monkeys.

Decking The Halls

As we prepare to decorate the house for Christmas, I kinda wish we could see family. I don’t regret the decision to spend Elijah’s first Christmas here in Colorado, because there is no way I’d want to travel over the holidays. And there is no way we could accommodate everyone coming here (meaning my family and Geoff’s). I wish we lived a better driving distance sometimes(though really 25 hours isn’t so much).

I know we’ll have a wonderful Christmas, and I’ll try to take a lot of pictures so you’ll feel like you are here. Hopefully you all will do the same. And perhaps in a Christmas future, we’ll venture up. But don’t expect it to be on Christmas Day! πŸ™‚

I miss all of you, in Alberta, in California, in D.C.

Friday’s Random Ten

Time Of The Season – The Zombies
Invisible Sun – The Police
Poisoning Pigeons In The Park – Tom Lehrer
Crying – Roy Orbison & K.D. Lang
Cynthia – Blue Rodeo
Predictable – Easily Amused
What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
Blue Satin Jacket – Brock Skywalker & His Irregular Heartbeats
God You Are My God – Delirious?
Higher Ground – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Frightening

I don’t know if it’s making news where you live but here in Aurora, it’s been a strange week.

Monday a little 6 year old girl was reported missing, presumed to have runaway. As the week progressed, there were no leads, and her father supposedly wasn’t being too cooperative (the mother lives in Detroit). Last night, they reported on the news the authorities believe the little girl was murdered, MONTHS AGO! They have found no body, and details aren’t being shared, but how does a family conceal a death of a child. They have 7 older kids in the house. Here’s the story.

It’s so disturbing. The longer she was missing, the more I thought the whole situation seemed fishy. The nighttime temps here were very cold, so if she was outdoors somewhere it would not bode well. If someone had her, I figured there would have been more leads. I’ll continue to watch this story unfold, and pray for the family.

In my world, not much has been happening. I can hardly believe how quickly time is passing (I know I say this a lot, but I am still in shock over it all). It’s Friday? Thanksgiving is next week? Yikes! as I mentioned the weather has been chilly, so I haven’t done much. I finally made it to the post office to mail off the “birthday week” package (Dylan, Dawn and Colin all have their birthday in the same week). Mom To Mom was good, I missed seeing the ladies. But we’re off next week for Thanksgiving.

This weekend I think the plan is to do some shopping, get our Christmas lights, and watch the Broncos beat the Jets. πŸ™‚

That’s about all, so I’ll close with a quote from Strange Brew.

Bob McKenzie: I was the last one left after the nuclear holocaust, eh. The whole world had been destroyed, like U.S. blew up Russia and Russia blew up U.S. Fortunately, I had been offworld at the time. There wasn’t much to do. All the bowling alleys had been wrecked. So’s I spent most of my time looking for beer.

Favorite Quote Of The Week

I actually got to tag along with some guys from the Department of Natural Resources as they took a giant drugged polar bear, stuck him in a net and airlifted him via helicopter out of harms way. ItÒ€ℒs quite a sight to see. They use a technique that was actually developed in Alberta as the most efficient way to transport Ralph Klein back and forth between Edmonton and Calgary.– Rick Mercer, on a visit to Churchill, Manitoba

A Bunch Of Random Things

As previously posted, we had a good time throwing our first party in the new digs. Wyoming people know how to party, they stayed from 3-10. We even played two rounds of Shout About Movies. We still have some food left over.

I dreamt last night that Jen & Greg, and Cate & Kaisara all bought a house together here in Colorado, right near us. Sigh, that was a good dream. πŸ™‚

It’s gotten colder here, there’s been a strong wind blowing for days. There’s no snow yet, but I’m sure it’s around the corner. With a chill in the air, it makes me want to decorate the house for Christmas.

We got a great turkey for Thanksgiving, a 14 pounder and it was only like $6! We also got an invite from the Jones’ to join them for Thanksgiving. I totally want to go, I love being at their house.

Zach Braff has posted a video post on his blog. It’s interesting to get his perspective on stuff.

On Demand has one episode of Robot Chicken, so we watched it. It was hilarious, as usual. It was about how all the members of N*Sync were murdered, except for Joey Fatone, so he has to avenge their death in a martial arts match. If you haven’t had the chance to see Robot Chicken, you have to find it!

Penn & Teller’s special on tv last night has prompted Geoff to declare we’ll go see their show in Vegas on the next trip. He is desperate to get back to Vegas, and I’d like to have people meet us there. If you are interested, email me. Maybe we can swing it.

No big plans for this week. I’ll close with a quote from that episode of Robot Chicken.

Britney Spears: [in a death-match against Joey Fatone] Wait a second! Meet my homegirls – Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Simpson’s sister…
Ashlee Simpson: I’m Ashlee!
Britney Spears: [sighs in frustration] Sh! The big kids are talkin’!

Happy Birthday Heather!

Heather is unique in that she is among the elite number of people to visit me wherever I move. She came to CA (before we had Beatrice so we bussed it almost everywhere we went), she came to Denver last year, and I expect she’ll come to Aurora in the next year (she loves to travel). Hope you have a great birthday bud!

A Treat For Me

When we bought the house, I wanted to get a treat for myself. So we made sure we set aside some of our house money for me to bring a little bit of Scottish heritage & Glasgow to our new home. I contacted Scottish Stained Glass, and set an appointment up within a week of being here. They came to our house, and we picked out a design that was very reminiscent of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who designed a ton of buildings in Glasgow , including our favorite spot, The Willow Tea Room. They said it would take 5-7 weeks for them to make the window.

I got the call on Tuesday that it was ready to be installed today. Here it is.

Our Stained Glass Window