Its beginning to look at lot like Christmas!

We've had a nice weekend so far . . . its only half over, thankfully. Weather-wise, what a weekend we've had! Rain, wind, clouds -- generally nasty stay-inside-by-the-fireplace-and-drink-hot-cocoa kind of day. I did find a very cool channel on the On-Demand portion of our cable line up. There is a channel under HD programming that I stumbled across, and I love it! Its got a crackling fireplace that fills the screen (in high def, no less!! It looks almost real!) and there is Christmas music that plays. How cool is that?!? I had it on for awhile last night.

Yesterday was a nice Saturday. We got up and went out to breakfast after lazing around for awhile. I think we got to the restaurant about 10:30! Then I took Bill home and I ran around and did some errands. Stores were CROWDED -- of course. I wasn't surprised, and I tried to be patient -- sometimes a difficult thing for me. (Why don't some of these people just STAY HOME?!? LOL). I went to Costco to return an item that we had purchased for Bill's niece Marie, (Costco was a zoo; lemme tell ya! Wowzers!). Then I went to Toys R Us and bought another gift for Marie, something for Shane, and a toy for the Adopt-A-Family that we're doing at work. We ended up with tons of gifts for this family, and $52 extra dollars, so I decided to fill in what little gaps there were. We needed one more toy for the daughter and some fun things for the mom. Anyway, after that I turned in some books for credit at Rerunz, and of course had to buy some books!

Then I braved it -- I almost chickened out and went home. Don't make me do it -- please! But I needed these specific picture frames, and so I made the plunge into Christmas madness -- yes, sports fans, I went to . . . WAL-MART!!!! The place of Christmas shopping hell, where you end up having to park 14 miles away, and as you approach, you are sucked into the maw of the electric doors, into the mass of humanity teeming inside -- as strains of Hotel California drift through your overloaded brain ("We are programmed to receive. You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave . . .")until it spits you out, pale and shaking, and totally broke, collapsed on the sidewalk with a sign that says "Will work for help finding my car. . . ."

Well, okay maybe I'm being a LITTLE dramatic. Heehee But geesh that's what it feels like sometimes.

Then it was off to Kohl's to finish shopping for the mom of the Adopt-A-Family. I bought her some warm PJ's, a sweater, and a nice warm throw blanket for these cold winter evenings. I even ended up with $10 worth of Kohl's cash -- gee, I'll have to go back today for myself!!!

Then Bill and I decorated our Christmas tree! It was a lot of fun. We still have our big 'ol entertainment center taking up room in our dining room, so the rest of the house is kind of a mess! I hope we sell it soon because its really in the way. We've got it listed on Craigslist, so we will see what happens. No real interest so far; maybe people are too broke right now.

Here's some pics of our tree, and of the entertainment center. If you are interested in buying it, and you live in the Chico area, email me from the link on the right. I've also included a pic of the neat Thomas Kinkade Christmas tree, depicting the nativity story, that Bill gave me for Christmas last year.

Here's our tree:


















Here's a pic of our tree again, and you can see our TV with the fireplace channel I was telling you about.


Here's a pic of the Kinkade tree -- it lights up and plays a song. Its very cool!


Here's a pic of Mark's cat Patches -- giving me the highly distainful cat look that says, "You humans are so weird . . ."


And last but not least, here's our entertainment center. Its listed in Craigslist Chico as Oak Entertainment Center -- $175, but we will entertain reasonable offers.