Merry Christmas

I just want to wish all my two readers Merry Christmas.  

My family is spending it with family in the Detroit area and are having a wonderful time.  We have been able to have a great time of family fun of eating, visiting, and of course opening our gifts.  

We gave and received many nice things.  We got this really neat Michigan end table.  We are looking forward to putting i together and using it.  Our kids got some nice outfits and toys that they will enjoy as well.  

My husband gave me the Macarthur Study Bible in the NKJV and I have enjoyed that all ready. 

He also surprised me with a night away at the luxury hotel in downtown Detroit.  The ironic thing is that it is the one whose Christmas tree i blogged about in an earlier post.  I am so looking forward to it.  It is a 70 story hotel in the heart of Downtown and it either has a river view or a city view.

I think we also plan on seeing the new movie Nation Treasure: Book of secrets.  I have been looking forward to this movie for a long time.  I will give a review after I watch it.  

New section

I am going to attempt to start a new section which I hope to update weekly. Notice I said the word hope. Most of the jokes will come out of Readers Digest:

For my first post in the category, I am going to do two.

1. A farmer offers to help a driver get his car out of a mud hole for twenty bucks. "Yours is the tenth car I have rescued today," he says.
"Wow," said the driver, "when do you work your land? At night?"
"No, night is when I fill the hole with water."

2. (by Amy Buckles) Tourists come to Yellowstone National Park armed with a lot of questions. As someone who works nearby, I don 't always have the answers. Like the time when one earnest woman wanted to know, "at what elevation do deer turn into elk?"

President Who?

I can't wait any longer. I have kept my mouth shut long enough. I have been trying to avoid this topic as I did not want to make this a political minded blog, but with an important Presidential election coming up next year, it is bound to get that way somewhat as I vent my frustration with the candidate field.
I guess all I want for Christmas is a good presidential candidate.
I consider myself to be a Conservative Republican, but if the candidate on the Democratic or Third Party side were better, I would vote that way. If I were a Democrat, my choices are awful, but if I had the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama I think I would vote Republican. I know that is the sentiment of some Democrats that I know. Being a woman, I would love to be able to vote for the first woman who actually has a chance to be President, but I cannot back that woman.
On the Republican side however if I could take the good parts of Rudy Guiliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee, it would be the perfect candidate. I have liked Mitt Romney from the beginning. He did great work in Massachusetts as the governor while working with the ilk of Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. He has changed his stand on issues over the years and I don't know if it was political or if it was truly changes from the heart. Some might say, "but he is a Mormon, don't you have a problem with that?" As a Christian, I do have a problem with the religion itself, but a truly practicing Mormon will be a moral person (they don't even drink coffee or pop due to the drug caffeine) and a true believer in family values. So, a Mormon for president I wouldn't have a problem with as long as he held true to the values he ran on.
As far as Rudy, I like his leadership ability, but his social stands I don't like as much. He is not as Conservative on the issues of gay marriage--civil unions and abortion as I would like him to be, but I could stomach it and vote for him, possibly depending on what the alternative would be on the Democratic side.
Mike Huckabee is a Baptist Minister and pro life and pro marriage (between one man and one woman), but he does not believe in school vouchers and has not been as hard on the immigration problem that we have today. Again, I could vote for him possibly depending on his running mate.
On Fred Thompson, the same was said of Reagan. He has that Hollywood mentality to a point. He seems to be conservative, but I have not heard enough of his beliefs and political mindset to know how I would vote on him.
Okay, I know I just lost any readership I had by putting politics into my blog. I know it is all controlled by a Sovereign God, but we still have to be careful who we vote for as God has blessed us with the priviledge of being Americans and with that does come a say in who leads our great country.

oops, sorry. Forgot to change it. For those who requested. Here are some pictures of our GM tree (from a previous post). The first one is without decorations. The second one is just a picture of the pinecones that came on the tree, and the bottom one is with all the decorations. It is 7 1/2 feet tall. With star, probably 8 1/2 feet tall.

flowery surprise 2

These are my surprise flowers. They are probably a 60.00 bouquet. Imagine that!

A flowery surprise

My family was in town from Washington State and we had been away in the Chicago suburbs for the day. When we returned after a wonderful dinner at Texas Roadhouse (thanks dad) around 8:00pm, there was a vase of flowers on my doorstep. I thought that there must be some mistake and they got the wrong house again, like my neighbor's edible arrangements as well as the many pizzas that come to the wrong house (our house number is hard to read and the neighbor's house is on our street when they face the other one, so it is natural to get the addresses mixed up). But, lo and behold, my name and address was on the card, so it was actually to me. I was trying to figure out who would, out of the blue, send me a beautiful arrangement. My family, including my husband, was just as surprised as I was. When I opened the card, it said, "We thank you for your hard work this fall and are grateful for you -- The executive team at Southern Living at Home". That was the odd part. I have not worked for them in over three years. My husband said that it is the best bonus I ever got from them and I am not working for them any more. Though the mistake was made, my name was on the card and I certainly was not sending them back. Happy Fall to me!
I did some checking with the florist who sent them and they were sent from the corporate offices of Southern Living at Home. Somewhere the lines must have crossed and I ended up with someone else's expensive flower arrangement, but hey, who's complaining? Not me. They look beautiful on my dining room table.
I guess the Lord knew that I needed some flowers. Southern Living at Home was just thanking me for all the hard work that I did for Pampered Chef this fall . A picture of these flowers will be forth coming.

In Remembrance

Today (December 7th) is a day that will remain in infamy. Those are famous words by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (on December 7th, 1941)on the day we were attacked 66 years ago very early in the morning at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The Japanese woke a sleeping giant--The U.S. by attacking us by surprise. I want to take this post (my 2 people who read it) to thank those veterans who gave their lives that day aboard the U.S.S. Arizona and U.S.S. Oklahoma, may you rest in peace. And to those survivors who managed to escape the vicious attack, thank you from one grateful American.

Tis the season to be busy, fa la la la la la la la la. We go here and there and to and fro to do this or that. We go from store to store and party to party. We have kid activities to do as well as adult ones.
For example: here is a list of things that I have to do this month (not that I am not excited about any of these as I love the busyness of this time of year).
Tonight my kids had their home school Christmas program. It went really well. I dressed them as Mary and they had a baby to rock in "Away in a Manger". It was so cute. They could hardly be heard though as their voices did not carry well, but they did a wonderful job.
Monday is a business meeting at church that I have to make Christmas cookies for per. pastor's request, so the cookie baking starts tomorrow.
I have to get my Christmas cards made, bought, and sent out sometime in the next week.
Our Church Christmas parties are next Friday. Those are always so much fun and I look forward to those every year.
THen on the 19th is our Church kids program Christmas party in which I have to have more Christmas cookies. Thank goodness for the technology of the freezer. I only have to make cookies once and voila, I have cookies for future activities.
Then on the 21st we leave for our annual pilgrimage to Michigan to spend the week with the in laws.
I am sure there is something missing somewhere.
Sometime after the 21st I have to fit in a showing of the new movie National Treasere: Book of Secrets due in theatres on the 21st.