This really isn't our world today ...

this was last week, but I hadn't shared the picture so thought I would.

Home from the Hospital's Christmas Party. Little things make me just glad to be here. Like an invocation at the start of the party. Part of the beginning of that included a line that went something like this: "some places they prefer to say Happy Holidays, here we still say Merry Christmas!" I hope it makes your heart as glad as mine.

The food was delicious. We will make every effort to attend this party from now on. I also won a $50 gift card this evening. :) Yippee!!! We went straight from the party (which is still going strong I'm sure) to WalMart and promptly spent it and more. It certainly was appreciated and came in handy. We should now be ready for tomorrow. Except for one major thing. The birthday gift. Why can I not find what I want???!!! Frustrating beyond belief. I suppose I need to try and make another run tomorrow to some other place.

My house heats up so fast from the oven going. The second cake is nearly done. Doesn't help to put nearly frozen chocolate chips into a cake. Sort of increases the baking time a tad bit. One jello cake ... we're going to have a houseful of littler people tomorrow ... and one decadent chocolate cake for the bigs.

Family pictures are slated for 1:10 p.m. Do you think it'll get accomplished? Bummer that the wind picked up a bit today and sort of put a damper on my bright idea. Will try it anyway. I decided I'd be nice and let everyone wear jackets. I might change my mind. It is a whopping 17 degrees out there ... might just go jacketless!

Ice candles are freezing. Realized a bit too late that I should have dumped out most of the water and let the bottoms freeze a bit thicker. So much for the second round that I was hoping to put out freezing tonite. So much to do ... so few hours in a day!

Have a good nite! I hope to be back tomorrow evening with a sneak peak at the family picture as well as pictures from the Sunday School Program. Will be a fun day!