Christmas Decorations

Most of my Christmas decorations are up, so I thought I'd post one of my favorite decorations.

This is my nativity set. It's Willow Tree by Demdaco. I love their angels, and decided I'd love to have the nativity set too. My Godmother has gotten me most of the pieces the past couple of years for Christmas. Finally I was able to complete the set last year. I love how simple everything is and how "crafty" the pieces are. My favorite has to be the camel, which is on the far right hand side. It's so cool. It even has a chain for a rope hanging off of it.

It's sad that I can only display this once a year!!

We don't have a Christmas tree up this year, and didn't last year either. We got an electric fireplace for our living room a couple of years ago, and now we don't have room. I'm not too happy about it, but it's the way it has to be for now. I'm hoping to get my house collection up soon. I'll try and take a picture of that when it's up too.

Say What?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
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Boston
The Inland North
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Thought this was funny. Try it out and post your answers!

This sucks. I'm at work right now. I should be shopping. Who doesn't give their employees the day after Thanksgiving off? Obviously my employer. I LOVE shopping the day after Thanksgiving. It's so much fun. But now I'm sitting here at work writing in my blog. If I had a second of time off, I would have taken it today. I guess this is a good reminder to not use all of my vacation before now. And, yes, I will bitch about this the day after Christmas too.

Well after all of my whining and complaining, this weekend turned out good. I watched most of the Office season 2 on Friday night, and then went to my hometown on Saturday. Went to the best italian place for dinner and then went to my alma matter for a play. They did Crazy for You. It was spectacular. I was really jealous, though, because they never had an auditorium when I went to school there, even though we had a great music department and had a lot of people involved in the local theater scene. This all happened because we (and the people before us) were good and strived to be great. It would have been nice if it would have been us up there, but it was nice that the next generation was able to have it and make good use of it. I did figure out that the kids in the play were in second grade or younger when I graduated. How depressing!!

I had a great time with my nephew and niece this weekend. I tried to get my niece to walk and say "Auntie Cole", but it's hard when her only word is "mama". My nephew wanted me to hang out with him all the time and even told his mom that he loved his Auntie Cole a lot. Doesn't that just melt your heart? Glad I sucked it up and didn't miss it.

Heard from DH on Sunday. They've gotten a couple of bucks and some does. DH said he got a really small doe, so hopefully he'll get something else too. A big buck would be nice. But not big enough that he wants to get a mount or something. I really don't want that in my house.

Took Baron into the vet on Saturday, he's got another ear infection. $108, antibiotics three times a day and ear drops twice a day isn't my idea of fun, but I don't want him suffering any more. Plus, I think it can make them deaf if you don't take care of it, right?

Well, another week at work. Only 5,000,000,000 until I retire. Too bad I only have Thursday off this week. I'm going to miss my shopping!!

Well, I'm feeling a little better than I did when I posted last. Hopefully this up-turn will continue.

Very excited about the mail today - got the Office Season Two on DVD!! And CSI Season Six. CSI is for DH for Christmas. We have the other seasons too. I'm going to watch part of the Office before I actually watch the Office tonight! How cool is that!

I also had something funny happen at work today. I had to set up a laptop for a school district that is buying a computer program from us. One of the bags had these strange "International Symbols" on it. I actually found it so funny, I scanned it at work!!

First of all, the bag wasn't big enough to fit over your head - let alone while singing. Second, is it okay for the baby to have the bag on their head when they're not crawling? I don't think the bag was even big enough to fit a newborn's head in. Plus, the bag had two small holes, making it almost impossible to suffocate even if you could get your head in it. No, suffocation isn't funny. These pictures are!! Oh, I even made copies of this for a bunch of people in my office, they thought it was so funny!

I've been in a sort of funk lately. I don't know if I'm overwhelmed by the Holidays coming up or just not happy at work the last couple of weeks. I have a terrible habit of committing to doing things and then really not wanting to do them when it comes time. I can even be super excited for something and then get almost depressed thinking about it when the time comes for the actual event. Case in point, this weekend I'm going to WI for a deer hunter's widows weekend. It's something I've been doing for 7+ years now. We go shopping, to dinner and to a play. It's usually very fun. Well, this year, only my Mom and SIL are going. We're not shopping. SIL has to stay home until 4pm with my nephew and niece until the babysitter comes, so most likely, we'll be sitting around their house. I just don't want to go this year. But if I don't go, my Mom will wonder if I'm mad at her. Yes, she's just as irrational as I am. It will be a big "thing" for a couple of weeks. What makes it worse is that we have Thanksgiving at my parent's house next week, and so I'll get all the questions again, why weren't you there? Are you mad at me? Is it something I did? So, the question is, what's worse? Doing something I really don't want to do and possibly have a good time? Or put up with stupid questions? Or, just tell my Mom the truth that I don't want to do it and still put up with the stupid questions? Basically, I want to crawl into bed for a couple of months. Maybe that would help. And, yes, I'm on antidepressants. Strong ones.

I was upset after Tuesday that some of the people I voted for didn't win. Sometimes, you find out something about someone you voted for, and you wish you could have known before the election. He wouldn't have gotten my vote.

Exciting night here at our house. DH wakes me at 3:30am for me to help him - with a deer!! I guess DH's friend hit one on the way to work and called DH to come and help him. It was dead in the ditch, but not very banged up. When the highway patrol came, DH asked if he could have it. And he said yes! He hasn't actually gone deer hunting yet this year (he'll go in WI in two weeks) but he's gotten a deer already! Let me just tell you how excited I was to help get that thing out of the trunk of our beater. I don't think I was much help cause I was spazzing about it so much. I don't mind hunting and I'll eat venison, but I'm not big on how it gets to my table. As I type, there is a deer carcus in my garage. What a lovely thing to come home to! Then, after we get this deer out of the trunk, DH tells me when we're in bed that he was hoping to get a little something! I told him, no, not when you make me drag a deer out of the car! That negates any sort of "something something" that might happen!! Especially at 3:30am!!

Linda and I went shopping in MG on Saturday. We had a great time exploring the shops there. Although the coolest part of the night had to be when we went to JoAnn's Etc. They have the coolest assortment of letters there (like A,B,C, not the ones you'd write at summer camp). The best part was the HUGE letters they had. Here's the one I got:

Isn't this cool?!? I don't know what I'm going to do with it, probably decoupage it. But it's going in my living room. I'll take a picture of it when I'm done and it's up. Probably won't be for awhile. Linda got the letter "R". I wish I had a cooler letter, but I'll have to do with C. We were goofing around saying "C that over there?" and "R you going to get that?". It was fun. Oh, they retail for $7.99, but they're so cool they're worth it!!

Have you?

Just a reminder to everyone to get out on Tuesday and
Vote!!

If you don't know who to vote for, I can either tell you, or you can check out who's running in your district by checking out the following links:

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Find your state

100 years ago, women were fighting for the right to vote. Honor them by getting out on Tuesday and VOTING!!

I'm Nicole and I approve this message.

Happy Birthday, Bro!!

Today my big brother is 35 years old!! I know he'd hate me telling all of you that. He really hates getting older. The picture above is my bro tracing his son's body with chalk. I wish I had access to my mom's photo albums, because she has a lot more embarrassing ones of him! But this was the best one I had of him. It's always been interesting for me to see other people and their siblings. My brother and I are 5 1/2 years apart. We had a couple of years when I was in middle school when we would fight, but we never were at each other's throats. One - that's not our nature (we both hate fighting) and two - I think we really got along. I never really had to grow up in his shadow because he was in sports and I was in music. He wasn't great at school (even though he has his masters now in telecommunications) and I was. Now, we still get along great. The best part is that he and DH are best of friends. I get along with his DW. I'm nuts about their kids. It's so cute you almost have to puke. But I'm happy to have him around. Happy birthday, bro - I love you!