Merry, Merry & Happy, Happy

My Son Is A Playa

Johnnie is 4 years old now and is continuing to express his love for girls. It is the cutest thing.

Over Thanksgiving holiday, while visiting in El Paso, we met my BIL's girlfriend and she has a 3 year old girl. The kids played together well and after taking a group picture, I noticed that they were holding hands. Awwww!

About a week ago he asks Jenny if he can listen to Ratso Frats (Rascal Flats). This happens to be one of Jenny's favorite groups, so we have lots of their albums.

Jenny: Why do you want to listen to Rascal Flats?
Johnnie: Because Olivia likes them.
AWWW!

Olivia is in his class at daycare. She came to his birthday party and he just went to hers last weekend.

I picked Johnnie up from daycare the other day and all of his female classmates want to hug him bye. The teacher tells me that he is the only boy that all the girls want to hug.

You go, buddy!

BTW - I got the new computer set up and running, now is the arduous task of moving everything from the old computer to the new one. Yea, me!

And That's What I Think.

Christmas Is In The Air

We're usually completely done Christmas shopping by this time of the year. We generally start by August or September and get a few things as we go. For some reason this year we got a late start, in fact, before Friday we had done less than 5% of our shopping.

Can you guess what we did this weekend ? . . . . . . . . (Drum Roll) . . . . . . . . . . . . That's right, Christmas shopping. I started on Friday and then Jenny and I went a few hours Saturday and then some more on Sunday. We are now about 95% finished. WOO HOO! Thanks, Grandma Linda for watching the kids.
BTW - We got a new computer (Even though I was able to restore all our lost e-mail) and I will have us switched over soon.

They have a thing at Lacye's school called Penguin Patch. It's where you give your kid some money and they pick out and buy gifts for you. They come home wrapped and go under the tree. It lets them be responsible and they learn about money and trade, etc. Well, Johnnie was wanting to do some shopping since Lacye did and Mommy and Daddy did. So Sunday I gave Grandma some money and she took him to the store and he got to pick out some gifts for us. He was really proud to be part of the shopping experience.

It wasn't an entire shopping weekend, though. Saturday morning we all went to breakfast with Santa. They served pancakes and sausage and there were ornaments to be made and face painting and of course sitting on Santa's lap. It was extremely busy and took an hour and a half just to wait in line to see Santa. The kids really enjoyed it though.

Saturday evening we had dinner at a really good family style restaurant called Babe's. We like to eat there at least once a month. The food is awesome and the atmosphere is up beat. This restaurant is downtown, so after we ate, we walked outside and waited for the Christmas parade to march by. It was a lot of fun, everyone was in jolly spirits even though it was a little cold. It was neat to see all the lights and hear the music and, of course, Santa brought up the end.

From there we walked around the corner and all got either hot chocolate or yummy flavored coffee and then sat in the car listening to Christmas music while we watched the fireworks.

I couldn't have planned a better day. I love my family!

Merry Christmas, Y'all!

Updates

NASCAR
For those of you that have been waiting with anticipation now that the Nascar season is over; I beat Jenny in the fantasy racing league that we joined back in February. Thank you.

TIME SHARE
You'll remember that we went to a time share presentation last month. Well I finally got around to looking at our "free" gifts. You have to register your gifts within a month or two (depending on which one) in order to take advantage of them. In reading the fine print, I found that the 3 day / 2 night accommodations required a $85.00 courtesy deposit, fully refundable when we take the trip. Not happy about that. Then I read the fine print for the free airfare for four to "almost" anywhere in the world. That required a $165.00 / per person deposit. WHAT! You have got to be kidding me. Needless to say, we wouldn't be using those "free" gifts.

I asked Jenny if we should see if anybody we know would want these and she said not to bother any of you with these headaches, so they went to "file 13". The only thing we got out of it that was actually worth anything was two $20.00 coupons to a restaurant in Dallas. Since the bosses at her new job have been generous to her and we probably wouldn't drive to Dallas for this restaurant, she took them to work and gave them away.

Lesson reinforced - NOTHING IN LIFE IS FREE!

COMPUTER PROBLEMS
So I wake up today and turn on the computer. As you may remember, we've been having problems with the computer booting up. It takes patience as well as diligence it get up and running. Today, for some reason, it decided to delete all our e-mail that was saved in folders and files, etc. The address book was fine and the pop3 settings were fine, but all the e-mail ~ gone! Fearing that I had a virus, I ran my scanner but found nothing. I'll chalk this up to the old computer is on it's last and final leg. We've already found the computer we are going to buy, but have been waiting because I read that with the delay of MS Vista, computer sales are expected to be low. In waiting, I expected to get a better deal. It doesn't matter now, though, we'll be visiting Best Buy in the very near future.

CHRISTMAS CARDS
The Christmas Cards are almost done and should be in the mail in a few days. We are doing them ourselves this year to give them a personal touch (not to save money - those ink cartridges are $30.00 a pop!) Look for them in your mail box by Monday at the latest.

And That's What I Think!