Smurf Makeover

My little blue car got a bit of a makeover tonight.It's gotten pretty frustrating dealing with my foggy windows, my noisy windshield wipers (which are fairly new) that don't work very well on my new windshield and my nasty yellow headlights.

The headlights before:And after....It only cost $8 and a little elbow grease (the guy at the auto store showed me a product that cost $24, but I found one on a different shelf for $8):Then I put RainX all over the outside of the front and back window. And finished by using anti-fog cleaning wipes on the inside of the front and back windows. This is how gross the inside of my back window was (it's so gross, you can see my hand print) :

I had no clue the window was that nasty. EWWW!! I've been struggling to keep the fog off the inside of my windows and my windshield clear in the rain. I can't wait to see how it works out! If I didn't have to wait for the coating on the headlights to dry and cure (supposed to take 24 hours), I would have gone for a drive to see how the Smurf's makeover worked out.

Our Christmas Weekend

Our weekend began delivering furniture to Becky. I'm telling you, Santa uses an 18-wheeler. There's no way he can get all that stuff in his sleigh; we could hardly get the furniture and everything else in Doug's truck. We brought my parents a couple little trees. They were kind of a selfish gift because I wanted the little trees, but we don't have room in our yard for them. I got to tree-sit for a few weeks until Christmas.

My parents opening gifts they got in the mail from my siblings:

My step-dad feeding the deer:

Hitler the cat:

Cute, sleeping deer:

Then the animals decided to stick their butts at me:

One of the deer is missing some teeth, so it's tongue sticks out all the time:

My mom dressed up the dogs:

He looks so thrilled to be dressed up:

My mom made Christmas lunch/dinner a lot easier on herself this year. She usually bakes a turkey and ham with all the fixin's, but this year she decided to make everything the day or 2 before and have ham or turkey sandwiches and salads.

I realized I haven't posted pictures of the drive to my parent's house. Here is the bridge we cross to get there:
And here are some pictures of the trip back home:There are 5 turns that look like this; switchbacks aren't too fun:

After staying the night at my parent's house, we drove to Doug's parent's house. We found it's easier for us to stay the night at my parent's that way we don't have to drive for hours and leave soon after we get there, then we can spend more time with both our families. I feel bad we didn't stay as long as we could have with Doug's family, but my stomach was not happy. And, I didn't take a single picture while we were there :( It was really nice to spend time with both our families over the weekend. We have a bunch of food leftover too, so we'll be eating salads and burritos all week. I bought 7 ingredients to take to Doug's parent's dinner and left 4 of them at home, so we had to stop and buy them again. We have (all chopped up) 2 heads of lettuce, 4 bell peppers, 2 onions and about 50 tortilla shells in our fridge. Then we came home with what wasn't used: 2 bags of tortilla chips and 20 more tortilla shells (tortilla chips and shells were brought by Doug's sister too - luckily Bonnie took the other 2 packs of tortilla shells), 2 more onions because there were onions in the pico salsa, and another head of lettuce. We left the bell peppers there because we don't eat them and already have 4 chopped up at home we don't know what to do with. The moral of the story: Although I'm given a list, I've learned that I will call around to double check what the other siblings are bringing before I go out and buy it all .... twice. The burritos we had for dinner were really yummy. The pulled pork and rice was from Costa Vida and I love that restaurant. I just realized that I have really bad luck when I eat Costa Vida, not that Costa Vida makes me sick, but I'm sick before I get there and I'm always so bummed I can't enjoy the food as much as I'd like too. It was so nice to spend the weekend with Doug. He was finally able to get a better nights sleep on Friday night and it feels like we spent more time together this weekend than the whole month combined.

Merry Christmas!!

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

May this holiday season bring you lots of love and laughter.

Last Week's Entertainment

We've had a pretty busy week, but poor Doug was so tired he was losing track of what day it was. From Sunday night to Thursday night, Doug only slept about 12 hours total! He got a little more sleep last night - 6 hours.



The pictures in this post are pretty cruddy because they're all from my phone.



I tried to give blood a week ago, but my iron levels were too low, so the gave me a sticker, a cookie and a drink.

We've gotten SO many sweets at the office over the last couple weeks. Our marketing department received a yummy box of cupcakes (I ate the chocolate one with candy cane on it):My work building was broken into and the dingbats went through the walls to try to get computer equipment from another company in the building. There was another area further down the hallway that looked like this, but they didn't get all the way through the wall. The also shattered glass inside the suite. We heard the police department came with K-9's and found the burglars.This was part of the cubicle decorating contest too. The judges (our managers) gave each area a different category that we won, so we were all winners. The sign in the elf's hand says, "Health Care Reform":Doug and I were able to spend some time together last night, so we went on a date to Claim Jumpers. We had a delicious dinner. The kitchen lost our food ticket, so they offered us soups/salads while we waited a few more minutes - and they didn't charge us for them :)I had a half rack of baby back ribs:Doug had the rib-eye:The restaurant put Santa hats on their animal heads:He finally had his yummy birthday dinner.

Then we drove around our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. A long story from earlier this week:

My commute on Wednesday morning consisted of me yelling at our previous mortgage company, their tax department and a third party tax agency for the mortgage company. A year and a half ago when we refinanced the house they paid the property taxes twice somehow and when the county reimbursed the funds they sent us an escrow overage check. We didn't know what it was about, we just knew we were refinancing and expecting to get money back. We cashed the check and paid off some debt. Then we start getting letters and phone calls that we owed them $3000+!!! After 2 weeks of arguing with the title company and the bank, they explained everything, found their mistakes and we sent the money back. NOW a year and a half later, they want the $3000+ all over again!!! I was so pissed the other day, I was sweating! I seriously yelled at 6 different people over an hour period while on the phone. I tried to warn the people on the phone that I was pissed and I wasn't going to pay this money again when they have record of it being paid and the account was closed and paid in full. Each person I yelled at was so patient and understanding, I really have to give credit to their customer service skills! The problem is the 3 systems don't "talk" to each other apparently, so the bank system didn't let the bank's tax system know that we paid the money, which in turn, didn't let the 3rd party tax company know we paid the money. UGH! It was so frustrating! The last supervisor I yelled at said I was going to need to call someone else and I lost my mind. I said, "I'm not fixing a problem your company caused AGAIN! YOU need to conference call the other 2 departments and fix this yourself!" He ended up putting in a "work order" and said it can take 7-14 days to research and fix the issue. I told the supervisor, "I better NOT have to fix this crap again in another year and a half!" So, we'll see what happens from here, but I better only get the resolution letter he promised.

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #15

Here is the final song!!

Primarily ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Thanks for playing along!!

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #14

1 - Currently the annum's unrivaled occasion of term.

2 - Ivory and lemon-colored alloys.

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #13

1 - Glossy brown orbs received prolonged exposure aloft an inferno.

2 - I question the identity of the cherub before me.

Just a couple more days of songs!

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #12

1 - Bejewel the vestibules.

2 - A fellow of white is bitterly cold.

Doug's Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!
This picture is funny because I'm older than Doug.


Doug's birthday came and went and unfortunately it was very uneventful. I put candy and a card on his truck so he would get it when he left for work in the morning. I wanted to find a HUGE bow to put on his truck (like the fancy bows in the car commercials) since his first truck payment was on his birthday, but I didn't.Hopefully this is his last season of working 2 jobs; it's like 2 full time jobs through the month of December. I'm so grateful he's been able to have 2 jobs as long as he has, but it's getting old and taking a toll on Doug. And it sure makes it difficult to spend time with him.... I spend time with him, but he sleeps and I sit quietly :).

We had a cute little visitor come visit for Doug's birthday:

I'm not sure how this little frog got into our garage, but when it jumped I had a small freak out moment thinking it was a spider. OHHH, I just remembered a really funny story my mom told me a while ago. She puts potty pads down at night for her dog. One night the dog, Katie, went to the bathroom on the potty pad and my mom got up to clean it up. The potty pads are white and seem bright in a dark hallway, so she could see Katie pooped. As she got closer, the poop jumped!! It turned out to be a little frog sitting on the potty pad and not dog poop.

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #11

1 - I beheld a trio of nautical vessels.

2 - A cardinal-clad gentleman's arrival is imminent in our small municipality.

GREAT SALE!!!

I'm hijacking this sale from Autumn's blog:

If you are pregnant, know someone who is, or need a gift...this is a GREAT DEAL! Check out the link for Autumn's blog for the sale info. The sets are $45, but with the promo code: christmas - you can get them for $5!! ($14.95 with S/H)

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #10

1 - Dear, there's a biting exterior.

2 - Thrice I proclaimed: Permit the atmospheric frozen water vapor to descend.

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #10

TEN DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS!!! 1 - May the deity bestow an absence of fatigue to mild male humans.

2 - An event that arrived on a cloudless witching hour.

Birthday Dinner

Doug's birthday is coming up and so are his endless work days. I guess his endless work days have pretty much arrived, they just get longer and longer as Christmas gets closer. Which reminds me!! Christmas is in ELEVEN days!! YAY for Christmas! Okay, back to Doug's birthday dinner last night....You might remember all the restaurants we went to for my birthday; we sign up on our favorite restaurant's websites and they send coupons for free food when birthdays roll around. Doug likes steaks and we had a little extra time last night, so we went to Black Angus. They brought his dinner out and I had to take a picture of it. How pitiful is his dinner:
He didn't even touch the plate before I took this picture. SO SAD!! It's steak, fried shrimp and broccoli. I feel so bad! I was hoping he was going to eat a big, yummy birthday meal and then we got this sad, little dinner on a really big plate. The last time we were there we got a free birthday dessert, but we paid for Doug's. Hopefully the next dinner will be much better.

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #9

1 - Do you perceive the same vibrations that stimulate my auditory sense organs?

2 - Parent was observed canoodling a red coated unshaven teamster.

#2 is funny!

Can You Guess the Christmas Songs? #8

A new week, a new singing Christmas picture :)

Here are the songs for Monday:

1 - Listen, the winged heavenly messengers are proclaiming tunefully.

2 - Jubilation of the entire Terrestrial globe.