Christmas Tree

Yay my Christmas tree is done! Yes, I suppose it's a tad early but hey, at least Thanksgiving is over! I think we're going to do a bit of Christmas shopping tomorrow so I'm pretty excited about that!

So my hubby goes to open one of our boxes of Xmas decorations and I see him jump about 3 feet back from the box. He then says, "Jen...OPEN THE DOOR!" which, of course, proceeds me to freak the heck out. Especially since I have to actually walk past this scary box of mystery in order to get the door! So I leap past and run to get the door open as Alan is running behind me with the box. He tosses it onto the deck and what should come out? Did you think mice? I know I did! I expected this Mother and loads of baby mice to come pouring out of my box of Christmas decorations. Oh..if only it was mice! It was a giant...SPIDER! Not just some hairy wolf-like spider. No. A huge, shiney, black, FAT spider. It almost looked like a black widow but I didn't see any markings on it (plus I don't think Vancouver has black widows). All I know is that was the biggest, fattest spider I had ever seen that didn't have hair on it. We slowly lifted the contents (tree skirt, stockings, etc.) out of the box and luckily there were no more spiders. Just lots and LOTS of bug corpses. Who knows how long this thing had been living there! We went outside and checked to see if we could find the spider anywhere but of course we didn't see it. Hopefully it won't be making it's way back inside! ;)

Back to the tree! Faythe is definitely enjoying it so far. She was taking a nap when we first started and were working on the lights when she woke up. She walked into the living room saying, "WOW!!" over and over. That seems to be her favorite word. Either that or because she's new to this earth, everything does wow her! She helped me put a couple of the ornaments on the tree then laid underneath it to look at the lights. I remember doing that myself when I was little. She's been pretty good so far with not taking off the ornaments but we've got a month to go yet so we'll see what happens!

Well I hear my little girl and hubby laughing in the other room and curiousity has overcome me. I must go join them!

CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas!!!

I love Christmas!! I can't help it, I always have. There's just something about the lights, the decorations, the songs, the food. I love it all. It's always been my favorite time of the year and yes I'm one of those people that if I could I would listen to Christmas music all year round.

One of my fondest Christmas memories is making a Christmas music album my senior year of high school (winter of 1988 to be exact!). Our choir recorded an album inside a church and we were there for about 14-15 hours. I loved every minute of it! I still play the tape every year.

My Mom is coming to spend Christmas with us this year and I'm so excited! She's going to be here for 8 days and it's going to be so much fun!! I'm also happy because every year she does so much to try to make Christmas special for everyone and it will be nice for me to return the favor for her this year. She can just sit back, relax and take in a Vancouver Christmas!

Okay enough Christmas talk for now, need to get to bed soon! I will end with my Top 5 Christmas Songs of All-Time:

5. Santa Claus is Coming to Town (believe it or not we sing this to our daughter as a lullaby! Works every time! If she's not ready for bed she says, "Uh-uh!! E-I-E-I-O!!")

4. Winter Wonderland (I sing this song all year-round, helps me to get stupid songs out of my head when I sing it.)

3. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (preferably the version by Tori Amos)

2. Tie - O Holy Night & What Child is This?

1. Carol of the Bells (as sung by the Ottawa Township High School class of 1989!!)

Although really this list should be broken down into top 5 traditional and contemporary Christmas songs! That blog is for a different day! Maybe when it gets a little closer to the actual day ;)...

Oh and by the way....I found more cross-stitch ornaments!! Apparently LewisCraft was hording them all! WOOT!

Faerie Faythe

Take off the antennas, add a wand and put in a faerie background and voila! Faythe the Butterfly becomes Faythe the Faerie!

My beautiful Butterfly Part II

WOW it's been awhile since I have posted! As you can see my girl is definitely growing up! She started walking at 8.5 months and has been going strong ever since. She loves to sing and tries to count to 5. She also is a big sorter/stacker. She loves to line up all her toys and stack anything she finds. Apparently my husband is like this too so I guess she gets it from him!

Faythe is 20 months old now. It's hard to believe that in less than 4 months she'll be 2! We're going to start trying for our second (and last) soon so that there isn't too much of an age difference between them. Faythe is in her halloween costume in this pic. She loved trick-or-treating! When she got her first treat (it was a purple lollipop) she said, "WOW!!!" it was so cute! I'm home from work with her today as she got her first touch of the flu yesterday and last night. She had a 100.9 temperature and was throwing up all night. Luckily the medicine seemed to take this morning and she's doing much better. Her fever feels way down and she even had a bottle and some toast.

So an update from last post...we were able to go to Illinois for Christmas. It was a lot of fun! This year is the Vancouver Christmas so we won't be going to Illinois again until next year some time. Faythe and I went to Illinois in May to suprise my Mom for her 60th birthday. That was great! Very short trip though as I was only home for basically 3 days. That was definitely long enough for me to be separated from my hubby tho! I've never been very good about handling time away from him since we've been together. I remember going to Illinois for 2 weeks alone to get things ready for the wedding and I thought I would die, ha! I can't help it, I love my boy!

I've been full force into Everquest 2 since it came out in Nov 2004. The models didn't end up bothering me as much as I thought they would and now for their first birthday they introduced these "Soga" character models which look more like Final Fantasy-type characters. They are much nicer so I've switched to those. For the first time in a RPG, I am not Saffyrre as my main character! I was initially but Sony (the makers of EQ2) really messed up my class that I liked to play (Enchanter) and so I stopped playing Saffyrre and started fresh with Faeyth. Unfortunately Faythe was taken so I had to go with an alternative spelling. Although if they ever offer first name changes like they did in the original Everquest, I think I'm going to change her name to Saffy. Right now Faeyth is a lvl 55 Woodelf Troubador (Good Bard). I'm really having a lot of fun with the game. Unfortunately my housework suffers as a result lol.

Hooray for Christmas is coming! I am so excited for it this year. I think partly because my Mom is spending Christmas with us and partly because Faythe is older so she will have lots of fun this year. I can't wait to decorate the tree with her and her see it for the first time with the lights on. I can't wait to have Faythe help me make cookies! I know she's less than 2 yrs old but she is a pretty capable little kid! Heck she's even polite, she says "thank you" and "please" and "excuse me" when she burps! She says "uh oh" when she farts but that's another story, ha! She just started telling "Knock! Knock" jokes yesterday. Not sure where she got those from!

Back to Christmas! I can't wait to see Faythe on Christmas morning with the tree full of presents and hear her say "WOW!" as she does to all things exciting. I really wanted to cross-stitch some Christmas ornaments this year but so far I've only been able to find 2!! Yes, that's right! 2!!! Dunno where all these Christmas Cross-stitchers come from that they literally clean them all out when they first come in! Sigh....hopefully I will find more as these two have already been spoken for!

Well time to grab me some breakfast and see if I can get Faythe to eat some more toast!