HoliDAY

Today was one of those hectic holiday kind of days. The ones where you're out and about, trying to finish the last of the holiday to-do list, but it feels like everyone else on the planet is out too. It started at the Post Office, where I had to mail my dad's Christmas present. He doesn't read my blog, so I'm okay saying what it was. I made him a framed collage of pictures of his dog, Ginger, who just passed away. I also gave him his Christmas stocking that has been in our family for my whole life. My mom made them when we were babies. She just found it and didn't want it, so I figured I'd stuff it and send it to him. A little nostalgic present, if you will...While we were at the Post Office, a guy drove by, rolled down his window and screamed "PROCRASTINATORS!!". I was kind of hoping he'd veer off the road into a fiery pit, but he maintained control. Dang! After that, we had to go to the DI to get some white elephant gifts for a Christmas party that we were invited to tonight. We ended up finding some pretty rad stuff. I picked a tape set of the 157th General Conference. It was still in its original leather case. Ryan picked a VHS set of the original Star Trek episodes. They were still in their plastic wrapping, so he is going to research to make sure that we aren't giving away something that's valuable. Wouldn't that be something?

The Christmas party was fun. Ryan's friend had set up a raffle and each person got a designated number of raffle tickets depending on when they arrived. So if you were late, you didn't get many. Ryan and I were the first ones there, which is pretty customary, so we got 8 tickets. We were told there would be some pretty cool prizes, but we were sure our bad luck would outweigh our higher chances of winning. :P They had it catered by Wingers (Ryan's FAVORITE place to eat), so we gorged ourselves on wings and sticky fingers. Then we sat around while everyone enjoyed picking white elephant gifts. I picked an oak toilet paper holder, and Ryan picked a hard camera case thing. I actually really liked it, so it's since become Nanny's. The person that got our General Conference tapes thought they were pretty funny. Then started the raffle. One prize was a gift card to Victoria Secret (pssh, yeah right! We so do NOT need that right now), there was a gift card to Target (which we wanted for our baby fund...no luck), and a gift card to the movies. We already have 3 gift cards to the movies that we haven't used since we got them months ago, so we didn't really care. But guess what? Our raffle number was called for the movie tickets. But Ryan's friend had a special gift for us. Instead of the movie tickets, he surprised us with a big bundle of cute baby stuff that he got just for us. The party was very low-key, so once the big stuff was done, I sat on the couch and chatted with the other wives, while Ryan got in some much-needed male bonding. He dominated at pool, while others tried their luck at darts. It's rare that we get to socialize with anything other than cats, so this was definitely a fun night for us.

My mom would probably love this. Only cost $3. Big money, no whammy, no whammy, STOP!

I was surprised this was in such good condition and still had all the tapes.

Too bad I disgraced my darling wrapping paper by being such a terrible wrapper. My mother taught me better than this!

I KNEW we weren't going to get any pictures at the party, so I decided to take a picture on the way down. It's rare these days that I even bother with my hair or accessories, so I had to capture this amazing sight!

(Day 239)