I've been quite remiss in my blogging, haven't I! It's been crazy busy here, and I feel as though I barely have time to stop and catch my breath. Now the holidays are approaching and it's going to get even madder for a while, as it always does. I realized I haven't provided many personal updates. Not that there's much to tell!
Todd got his first report card as we had our first parent-teacher conference this week. He's doing fine, gets along well with his classmates, and is starting to come out of his shell a little more.
Gas prices have been dropping nicely-- I hear it's below $2 in some parts of LA. I've never seen prices dip so fast! One station I keep my eye on frequently was changing their sign almost every day this past couple weeks! Let's hope it soon translates to lower prices in the stores, too.
I've joined the choir at church and have been having fun practicing Christmas carols with our little group. Sometimes I'm the only tenor, as the other two guys will occasionally prefer bass, depending on the song. Despite our small size, though, I think we sound pretty decent singing a capella. This year we're also trying something a little ambitious-- the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. My head has been filled with Christmas tunes a little earlier this year!
This weekend promises to be a busy one-- along with the usual chores/errands, we've got a (surprise) party to attend on Saturday, and then Thanksgiving potluck with our church on Sunday. Allan shall be hard at work in the kitchen, preparing our dishes :-)
Next weekend brings the usual festivities and seeing our families in LA as we celebrate Thanksgiving at Ron and Debbie's. Then a holiday party at work, and preparations for Christmas!
Christmas shopping is never an easy task, but this year, with all my online perusals, I discovered a website that makes your shopping easier. It's called Kaboodle, and you can enter the URL of just about any shopping website and it will extract key information and keep it in a list for you. It's been great for organizing potential gifts from a variety of stores.
One store in particular garnered lots of browsing by me last night: Lush! I would never have heard of it had it not been for Jenna sending me some of their soap a year ago. I spied some interesting gift sets there. So... thanks, Jenna, for introducing me to some really unique bath items!
Back to the grind... end of year means annual eval time at work, and all the fun paperwork that entails!
"Coming out of his shell"
ReplyDeleteIs that from spending so much time with turtles??
You Americans as silly having Thanksgiving and Christmas so close together. :P I can imagine that it's a busy time, yes.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're welcome! Everyone should know and love Lush!
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ReplyDeleteHa! Seriously ;-P
The good news is he isn't as bad as I was when I was little. I NEVER came out of my shell!
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ReplyDeleteNo kidding! When is yours-- September? October? Eh, close enough ;-)
I like how the Lush gift boxes have a nice variety of their products, so you get a good sampling. There is a store not too far from my parents' house, I may have to check it out in person when we go down there for Thanksgiving.
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ReplyDeleteSecond Monday in October. :)
I got my mom a little gift box for mother's day called "gardening mum" and it had a soap, hand/cuticle cream, and the packaging was plantable because it had seeds in it. Really cute and unique. If you go to the store it is nose overload!! But I find it really helpful to get to actually sniff a few of the things I can't figure out just from the description. Have fun!!