"Siiimmply, Haavving, A Wonderful Christmas Time"

I have this song in my head now after reading Big Lou's post about the five worst Christmas songs ever. Thanks. Better than "Daddy, Please Don't Get Drunk This Christmas". Can't say I can pull the lyrics to that one out of my mental rolodex of bad songs.

Sorry it's been so long with no post. It's a shame really, because I've got some good stuff to write about! You'll just have to keep waiting for a few more days. For now, I'll leave you with images of the sweet, 8 lb. 6 oz. Baby Bonnie helping decorate for Christmas.

The dog gets more and more cat-like each day.

Happy Birthday, Brent!

Brent turned 27 last Saturday (the 29th)! We met his parents for lunch and later celebrated with Pacific Rim cuisine at Kona Grill and drinks at Muldoon's in Carmel. Oh, and he also raked some leaves, helped me put up the Christmas star and posed for our Christmas card picture...pretty exciting birthday stuff. He got a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch to help him train for the mini. It looks pretty cool and I'm hoping he'll let me borrow it... :)

A New Thanksgiving Tradition?

We had a great Thanksgiving! My parents, brother, and Aunt Lori and Baleigh joined us in Indy on Thursday and stayed overnight to enjoy Black Friday shopping fun. Mom made the turkey and stuffing (and Dad helped, not me - as predicted) and I took care of the rest of the sides. Rob brought Roxie along and Maddie, the Amazing Barking Dog was there as well. Our dogs almost outnumbered our people!

Excited about my gravy boat. I am sad to report a Thanksgiving Day fatality, however...the handle of the china creamer. I was putting away the platter and there was a freak slip and then the sound of porcelain breaking. The only tarnish on an otherwise perfect Thanksgiving.

Turkey table runner. It is now to be known as the Traveling Turkey Runner, and wherever I go for Thanksgiving, so the runner will cometh.

A green bean snapping contest. What? Lori, turn something into a contest? Nah. Brent and Baleigh had a Roll-Off to see who could eat the most dinner rolls. Baleigh won.

Here is our aggressive, "pawsy" Westie trying to man-handle the precious Miss Roxie.

We Pounced the rest of the night away after dinner and went to bed way too late considering we planned to be at Sears at 5:00 a.m. We were able to score several great doorbusters at Sears for Christmas presents, and I pretty much shopped for myself the rest of the day. Merry Christmas to me?

Sifting through Black Friday ads as a tired pup looks on.

We had so much fun with our family and I hope this might become a new Thanksgiving tradition. We are thankful for our loved ones, our good health, and our comfortable lifestyles. I got some news of a little something extra to celebrate this year - on Wednesday I checked my Financial (CPA section) scores and found out that I squeaked by with a passing score of 75!!! I may just have one more to take depending on how my next scores come back. When I found out on Wednesday morning I started hopping up and down in my cube shrieking, "I passed, I passed, I passed!" Then I shed a few tears of joy. It's okay...my coworkers/employees know me well enough by now to not be disturbed by such an outburst.


My little, annoying Westie is walking on my computer and putting her wet snow-paws on the screen, so I'm going to go. Hope your Thanksgiving was as relaxing as ours. Bring on Christmas!

The Oaken Bucket Game...and More

Last week was busy, but there's rarely a non-eventful five day stretch at our house. We test drove cars on Wednesday night since my lease is ending soon. We were just about to hop into a Highlander when Brent realized that it was getting late and we needed to get to Costco before they closed. Our car guy, John, was not interested in us leaving, so I said, "John, unless you're willing to go to Costco with us, we've gotta go." So drive to Costco is exactly what we did. I hurried in and sprinted back to the dinner rolls so Brent wasn't trapped inside a small space with a car salesman for too long. I came running out with bags filled with 72 dinner rolls for our Thanksgiving feast at work and hopped back into the Highlander for the return trip to the dealership. Hilarious.

Our Thanksgiving feast at work was amazing. I don't throw that word around a lot (I think it's over-used), but this truly was amazing. We had several eight-foot tables filled with dish after dish. There were about six different dressings to choose from, five macaroni and cheeses, eight variations of green bean casserole, etc. It was a great time to share with our coworkers and be thankful for all we've been given.

On Saturday we tailgated at Purdue but didn't end up going into the game to see the massacre. It was freezing! After the game Laura, Chris, Brent and I went to Scotty's back in Indy and then watched Entourage in Chris's sweet apartment in Carmel. We had a great Saturday!

Laura joined us for the best tailgate we've had to date. I'm glad we didn't disappoint since she woke up at 5 to get down to West Lafayette!

DFAS employees love Purdue.

Laura and I befriended some strange men with a fire and single-handly prevented us all from freezing to death. They kept inviting us into their "Office", which was a large white van with no windows. I like to refer to these as Kidnapper Vans, and not something I want to experience. No thanks, the fire is all we're interested in. And the champagne toast...yeah, we'll drink to that to. But we want no part of the van!

I must get off here and keep cleaning and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. Brent and I are hosting this year and I can't wait! Big Lou's doing the turkey. She thinks she's just "helping" me with the turkey, but I think I'm the one helping her with it. I'm only 25 - a mere child - for crying out loud!

Happy Thanksgiving, Bloggers! I hope you all share the holiday with loved ones, and if you can't, come to our house!

Status Quo

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Not much going on around here - just work, class, household chores. Lather, rinse, repeat. Brent went to the Purdue basketball game in Lafayette tonight while I had class and held down the fort. The only other excitement of the day was the news that Laura has officially passed all four parts of the CPA exam, and Rachel passed another section and is now halfway done (or more depending on scores in the queue)! Congratulations to you both! No scores for me yet on the two tests I'm waiting for...but if it's good news I'll be sure to share it with you!




Bonnie and I are tired. She's had a long day of sitting in her crate waiting for us to come home and an evening filled with jumping on things. She nearly made it up on the coffee table today...awesome. She is excited about her Christmas sweater that I ordered for her today. She will be sporting it at our 2nd Annual Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Here's a link for a sneak peek...

See you in Chicago!

This past weekend was Ashley and Becca's birthday trip to Chicago to celebrate Becca's birthday, and Laura and I tagged along as a surprise that Ashley schemed up! You see, the girls always take a road trip to celebrate their birthdays. Laura and I popped into Lou Manalties where the girls were eating dinner last Friday night and Becca was very surprised! It was so fun to stroll into the restaurant, plop down in their booth, and say, "Fancy seeing you here!" She loved it. :)

Becca had a list of items to do on Saturday, and we may have hit...a quarter of them? It is possible that Laura and I were distracted by a huge sale at Banana and spent a large chunk of time sifting through the sale racks....yeah, that may have happened...

The things we were able to check off the list were: Navy Pier, Hancock Observatory (okay, so we actually didn't go up because it was $15 and we've seen it, but we were there...so check!), and riding the Brown Loop. Even though we didn't get to everything, we ate some great food, got to see the Macy's Christmas windows, saw the Blue Man Group, and had a blast being together in the Windy City.

Car snack carnage.

It took Laura and I more than 5 hours to get from Indy to Chicago due to traffic problems and other general ridiculousness....but we made it!

Breakfast at South Water Kitchen - yum! Zagat rated...haha

Matching Banana outfits...

The wine tower at Socca's bar. If you want good French-meets-Italian cuisine, go to Socca near Belmont and Halsted. If you want a jerk waiter, sit in Mark's section.

On Sunday morning we headed down to the Union Station area to eat breakfast at Lou Mitchell's. We were sold once we heard that you get donut holes and Milk Duds while you wait for a table.

The line at Lou Mitchell's...
Keep in mind that it was cold, very cold. We waited in that line for an hour and squealed with delight when the donut hole lady came back out with her basket to walk through the line periodically. We loved you, donut hole lady.

National Blog Month

Did you know that November is National Blog Month? Yeah, I didn't either. My fake blog friend Courtney (okay, I don't know her, I just like her blog) is trying to do one new thing each day and blog about it. I would love to do the same, but since it's already November 4th I will shoot for at least a few things this month.

Here are some new things I've done lately:

1. Wore my new pair of $18 Calvin Klein jeans (originally $69 - thank you Macy's) to the grocery

store on Sunday evening with the size tag still attached. Whoops.

2. Voted in Marion County for the first time. I got in a long line wrapping through a church parking lot at 5:45, surprised that so many people were ahead of me. Funny, since I smirked all the way to the polling site thinking, "Boom - that's right, Lindsey! The early bird gets the worm! Yeah!" Anyway, I got up to the doorway and realized I was at the WRONG PLACE. MY precinct was at the Lutheran church across the street, not the Methodist church. I stayed in line for a few more minutes, hoping that they would let me vote anyway and mainly not believing my mistake. Yeah, pretty sure it doesn't work like that, but I was hopeful they would say,
"Sure, come on in and get out of the cold damp air! Here's a pastry and here's your ballot!" Silly, silly, Lindsey.

I think that my voting experience went awry when I saw all the cars in the church parking lot, got excited like Bonnie does when she sees a pedestrian, car, small child, dog, etc. and then swung the car into the parking lot so I could outrace a fellow citizen for a place in line. I liken the experience to Black Friday and waiting in the Target parking lot hoping to score a sweet karaoke machine for $20.

I was able to eventually vote, so do not be concerned. Two hours later, I dropped my ballot through the scanner at the correct religious institution and determined that I had indeed earned a venti Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks. Too bad the line was crazy there too and I had to drive on so I wasn't late for my work conference.

It's been a few weeks since I've blogged, so here are the other happenings at our house -

1. Trip to Effy and Tampa - Two weekends ago, Brent drove his grandparents down to Florida for the winter so I headed to Effingham to spend some time with my grandparents. Bonnie and I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa on Friday and with Maw-Maw on Saturday. Baleigh and Sadie the Shih-tzu were there visiting as well so we had a rockin' slumber party. And Bonnie was sooooo good (insert sarcasm here). After the 4th potty-puddle hit the floor on Sunday morning I decided that we had officially worn out our welcome at both grandparents' and it was time to get back to Naptown.

Sadie loves Pringles...and pretending she's a person.

2. Purdue vs. Michigan - Brent, friend Chris and I went to Lafayette for the Purdue/Michigan game this weekend. Purdue has been real stinky this season so we were glad to catch a good game. We won 48 to 42 after a daring hook-and-ladder play. Phew...squeaked one out.