Author: Doris

Last night, the Cub Scouts showed off their collections. Here’s Vince looking at someone’s awesome car collection.

Where is Al Gore? The weather forecast in the Northern Hemisphere everywhere is for more snow. And it has been in deep freeze for many days already.

Al is investing in a foreign company which gets US government’s $800+ millions loan (from us, US tax payers) to produce $80,000+ futuristic “green” cars. Cars for generally public, don’t think so. Maybe, just for very few “green” people with a lot of “green” notes hanging around.

Without human, global weather changes (ice age vs. global warming) have happened many times before. During those changes, there wasn’t any man-made carbon in the atmosphere.

Yes, everyone needs to conserve, not only conserving energy, but also conserving everything else. “To leave as many as we can before we leave” and “being not wasteful” are always part of me. But to me, “having decent jobs and being able to pay the bills” is the foremost “green” thing that it can happy to any family world-wide.

To become a “green” fanatic (or worst, “green” parasites to feed on others’ job losses) isn’t the way to go. In short, “being green” and “being able to feed oneself” should be side-by-side and, furthermore, they should be hand-in-hand.

It’s suppose to snow a little tonight. The kids are wondering if school’s going to be cancelled. 🙂

We’ve been making a lot of pizza this year. Mostly we buy the dough frozen from the grocery store, thaw it, roll it out and put toppings on it and pop it into the oven on a cookie sheet. The pizza was pretty good, but because we used a cookie sheet, the toppings would done, but the crust would be soggy. If you wanted the crust to be crusty – then the toppings would char.

So we got some pizza stones:

Jeremy got a pizza spatula for Xmas:

Happy pizza making – with dough from scratch…

Does X’mas just pass? But, that doesn’t matter. This is what I like for my next X’mas gift.

All kind of ball pens as well as markers because, we are seldom at home and all ball pens and markers are dead because of their age. It frustrated me a lot when someone called and a quick note was needed because of my advanced memory. The ball pens were everywhere but they were seldom usable. You had to try thousands (exaggerating of course) of them, before picking one which was just barely working 🙂

Our stored food fares no better. It wasn’t difficult to find some can food which was already expired several years in our house. Mom threw most of them away. But for cokes, sometimes I just wonder.

I occasionally joked to our house guests that they should be vigilant to what they had just consumed. Even I ain’t sure 🙂

I asked for a window mounted bird feeder for Christmas so I could have some feathered company while I worked. A few days ago, I got my first bird visitor! However, today I sat next to the bird feeder for a good 8 or 9 hours and I got no visitors. Strange.

I also asked for an indoor/outdoor thermometer which has been really helpful the past few days. Yeah, it’s cold here.

(The magnet next to the thermometer was also a Christmas gift! I enjoyed that too!)

Yesterday, a co-worker of Jeremy’s invited us over to an art gallery where he and his wife were hosting a New Year’s celebration. They called it a Namaste party. It was a nice party – lots of kids for Vince to hang around with (there seemed to be a lot of tackling and wrestling and hide and seeking) and Edda appreciated the clear and wide spaces where she could wander and explore.

Although she almost always headed towards a doorway.

We stayed out until almost 10 pm! A new record for us (Edda did fall asleep around 8 pm). I almost fell asleep at 9:30 pm. Luckily, Jeremy did not fall asleep on the way home as he was our trusty driver.

Went to the mall yesterday to exchange some Christmas gifts. Jeremy ogled the combine tractor at the Lego store. Vince was not interested in exchanging his gift for the combine. No surprise there.

Found a whole store labeled “Petite”. Actually, the name was “Banana Republic Petite”. A whole store just for short people like me! So excited to get pants that fit. Apparently petite people are still 4 inches taller than me. OK, I don’t get these pants. Am I suppose to wear 4 inch heels with them or am I suppose to roll them or am I just suppose to pull them over my feet so the scrunch a bit on the bottom part of my leg? I’m so behind the times.

I rung in the new year with a cold and an insomniac night – so even though I fell asleep at 8:30, I was awake enough at midnight to hear the neighborhood fireworks.

Vince hosted a New Year’s Eve party which involved a shopping bag pinata:

Vince even put a dog bone in the pinata for Ruby – look closely at the Rubister’s mouth.

Then we celebrated with the traditional pepperoni pizza and Caesar salad combo.

Happy New Year to all!

I love this post-Christmas, pre-New Year time of year. Time to go over what went wrong and what went right this year. Making New Year’s resolutions that one hopes to keep and thinking that with the New Year, you get a chance to start over and begin again.

Just a few things to wrap up… Of course, what I wanted for Christmas the most this year was a cure for Rett Syndrome and I didn’t get it, so here’s hoping that my wishes will come true next year, a little reminder that if you are looking for charities to donate to before the end of the year, please consider RSRT! 98 cents of every dollar donated goes to funding research which will make my holiday dreams come true. 😉