Christmas is nearly here!!!

Can't write too much seeing as it is Christmas Eve and, as you now, it's necessary for everyone to scurry to bed so that Santa can arrive. I'm afraid we'll just have to leave him a note to help himself to cookies and milk (or Remy Martin, if he prefers) in the kitchen. If we left them out our little piglet of a puppy would gobble 'em up faster than you can say "Merry Christmahannakwanzmicas!"

We spent the weekend doing a little bit of traveling. We were in Neuchatel, Switzerland Friday and Saturday night then drove down to Montreux, Switzerland for Sunday night and now we're back home. We had a lovely time despite JD and CD having to fight off pesky colds. Poor CD has been hit pretty hard and has been feeling under the weather, but luckily we had no urgent plans so lots of breaks and nap times have been worked into our days to everyones satisfaction.
I haven't looked through the tons of pictures I've taken yet, but I will post some of the best ones once I have.

Well, it's getting late and we still have to take the doggies for a walk (we told our neighbors we'd take Picasso out at night while they are away). so, I'll fill in all interested parties about our travels in a future post but for now it's au revoir

Bonnes fetes!

Joyeuse Noel!!!

yum, yum...the scent of Christms continued

Dear me, it's nearly 9:00 a.m. and I find myself the only one up and alert. Even Ally is curled up fast asleep on the couch next to me. Thus, I thought I would take these free moments to post my previously mentioned thoughts on orange and cinnamon rolls. But before I get started did I mention that our guests, CD and JD, arrived safe and sound yesterday morning. So, it's quite possible this will be one of the very few posts made until after they leave on the 27th. Then again if sleeping this late is a regular pattern then perhaps I will find some blogging time. But, enough about that.


No doubt everyone has samples a cinnamon roll, warm and sticky with cinnamon oozing out the bottom and the glorious sweetness of glaze drizzled over the top. I'm salivating just thinking about it. But have you ever had an orange roll? Heaven. Pure and simple heaven. At least my mother's are and for me the aroma of hot orange rolls baking in the oven is the ultimate herald of Christmas. That sweet, tangyness wafting through the air. The delicious odors of yeast bread baking tinged with a faint scent of oranges...mmmm, perfection. For me this smell over almost any other stirs up images of my family gathering for the holidays. The warmth of our comfortable kitchen, my sisters and I sitting at the counter, legs swinging back and forth lazily watching my mother bustle about the kitchen. Her chastising us with, "Just because you're on vacation from school doesn't mean you don't have to help around the house!" The house filled with laughter and memories as we drag out the boxes of Christmas decorations and argue over where they should go on the tree. Laughing at our lopsided Kindergarten ornaments. Helping my mother adjust her village of electric houses on their cotton ball snow. Blowing on a steaming mug of hot chocolate after helping my father shovel the sidewalks. Funny how just a little thing like filling your own apartment with the aromas so familiar to your childhood can make it feel more like Christmas and more like a home. True it also makes me more homesick, but I'm trying to focus on the positive here.

So, on Tuesday I made up a batch of my mothers orange and cinnamon rolls. Being my first attempt I think they came out very well. Also being my first attempt I didn't think about the fact that my mother always baked to feed an army. Not only was her baking for our own household of five, but we would take rolls to my grandmother's house for Christmas eve dinner, she would make extras to give to friends at work, for people at church, etc. So, when I followed her recipe I ended up with nearly 3 dozen rolls! And I only have 4 people in the house to feed. Granted I did put some together as a little gift for our neighbors, but diminishing the supply by 4 rolls isn't really ALL that significant. Here is my mother's, now famous, recipe:

Yeast Rolls

21/4 cups milk

2 pkgs. Granular yeast

¼ cup water, I use about 1/3 with the 2 pkgs. Of yeast

¼ cup sugar

11/2 teaspoons of salt

1/3 cup shortening

1 egg

7 to 8 cups of flour

Scald milk, 190F.

Soften yeast in lukewarm water separate cup

Measure sugar, salt, and shortening in mixing bowl

Add hot milk and stir until all is dissolved, add the softened yeast when mixture is about 95F (lukewarm)

Add egg and beat until well mixed

Add bout half the flour and beat vigorously. Add more flour, ½ cup at a time to make dough stiff enough to knead easily. Keep dough on soft side rather than too stiff.

Turn dough onto floured surface and allow to rest 10 min. covered with wax paper to prevent drying. Clean mixing bowl and grease bottom and sides with shortening.

Knead dough until it is smooth and satiny about 5 to10 minutes or until it springs back when you press it with your finger. Place dough in greased bowl and grease top and sides lightly, cover and let rise until double in bulk (in a warm place). When double punch down to remove air bubbles. For orange rolls split dough into two balls and roll 1 out to about ¼ thick. Spread butter or margarine on and sprinkle with granulated sugar and orange rind (if you do both balls as orange rolls you will need to use 3 or 4 oranges) Scrape the oranges to get the rind while the dough is rising. Roll up like a jelly roll and cut slices and place in a greased baking dish. I use 9 x 13 cake pans. Cover and let rise until double again. Bake in 400 F oven for 15 – 20 minutes.

For the icing I use a walnut size margarine and shortening, 1 tsp. vanilla, maybe 2 cups of confectioners sugar and orange juice to make a spreading consistency.

You can make cinnamon rolls with the other ball by rolling out the same way, spread with butter or margarine spread brown sugar and sprinkle cinnamon over it. Follow directions for orange rolls. If you want to put icing on just use hot water instead of orange juice.

You can also make plain rolls by rolling the dough in balls and putting 3 to a muffin cup, they make nice dinner rolls. The recipe makes about 3 dozen if you want to freeze some don’t put the icing on until you are ready to use them.

As you might have noticed from the first picture I didn't have a candy thermometer so I just used our regular thermometer for when we get sick. Josh had a fit when he discovered this, absolutely sure that I had broken it. Apparently, and this does make sense, those thermometers are made to only go up to a certain temperature - if a humans temperature went up to 200 degrees they'd be dead. So, yeah, I get that I just didn't think about it. Luckily, Josh was wrong I didn't break the thermometer. I used it only to make sure the mixture was cool enough to add the yeast.

Well everyone has suddenly awoken. Isn't it funny how everyone gets up within 3 minutes of each other. Each stumbling out or their rooms, bleary-eyed, tousled hair, searching for their reviving cup of coffee. So, here's my last photo of my rolls to fee an army ( I made both orange and cinnamon rolls, by the way). Who knows when I'll be able to post again, but, gotta go!

the scent of Christmas

I don't know about you, but for me Christmas is all about wonderful smells. Whenever I smell certain things throughout the year they immediately evoke memories or just plain old warm fuzzies. Does that happen to you? For me the scents of Christmas are very distinct and they all remind me of family. Of course, there is the lovely, crisp smell of pine trees. Every year my family would go to the local tree farm, pick out, and cut down our own Christmas tree. You'd think that this wouldn't take a terribly long time, but for my family it was a momentous and LONG occasion. We'd bundle up in our warm clothes and trudge through the fields of trees examining each as we passed. There were 5 of us and we all had different tastes. One would find "the perfect" tree, but someone else would disagree, it was too short, the next "perfect" tree found would be vetoed for being too tall. Too fat, too thin, doesn't have long needles, needles are too long, has a branch missing on the back side, it went on and on. Eventually, we would all settle on one tree that everyone was satisfied with. If it wasn't the "perfect" tree it would be once we decorated it. If it still didn't meet someones specific requirements for the perfect tree then they had a whole year to plot their strategy for how they would get the tree they wanted next year. Usually, it was the bitter cold and thoughts of a hot lunch and hot chocolate that finally forced all 5 of us to come to an agreement. My dad would manfully saw through the tree and we'd or should I say, he'd, haul it back to the front to pay and strap it onto the car. Inevitably, once we got it home and put it in it's stand it was always so tall it wouldn't fit into the living room until we lopped of a little. I think my mom secretly sang, "I told you so. I told you so." in her head every year. So, yes the fragrance of fresh pine reminds me of cold winter days and family fun (hey who needs to remember all the fights and fits we had over picking the Christmas tree? Those temper-tantrums are long forgotten - at least by me, since I was probably the one throwing them.) This year Josh and I debated over whether we should get a real tree or buy a fake one. We hmmmed and hawwed over it, tried to purchase a fake one but returned it immediately when it was rung up at 2 times as much as the sign said. We tried to find the one in the price range we wanted, but after struggling through 2 conversations, in French, with 2 different store employees we gave up. And in the end we bought this cute, if tiny, live tree. See, it even fits on top of the table, which we decided was a bonus if our apartment decided to take on water again! Lucky for us we have great upstairs neighbors. Marion and Beat let us borrow their Christmas decorations, which they weren't using because they are going away for the Holidays. Yeah!! We had plenty of ornaments to choose from for our little "Charlie Brownesque" tree. I added some red ribbons I had and we had been smart enough to grab some string lights from a couple moving out of the country this summer.

The other smells of Christmas for me are those which emanate from the kitchen. My mother is a wonderful cook and an even better baker. And at Christmas time our house was always full of the warm, delicious fragrance of baked goods. Classic sugar cookies, which we would help decorate, orange rolls, cinnamon rolls, pies, chocolate crinkle cookies, haystacks, chex mix, you get the picture. There was always something in the oven creating wafts of mouth-watering smells. So, I thought to put myself into the true Christmas mood I'd have to fill my own kitchen with those magnificent and nostalgic aromas. Yesterday, I kicked things off by making some sugar cookies. I followed my mom's recipe with only some minor substituting. I might have mentioned this before, but I'm not sure, my mom used Crisco in EVERYTHING. I, personally, think everything she makes is fabulous so when I'm in the States I use it to. Unfortunately, I can't find shortening, or any close approximation, of it here. So, I use butter instead. When I told my mom this she sighed and said, "mmm....butter just makes them better!" I don't know if I agree with her on that, but maybe I'm just biased because I think mom just makes everything better!
Last night, I sat around frosting the cookies and watching White Christmas, my all time favorite Christmas movie. My DH looked at the screen and said, "So let me get this straight. You are watching White Christmas now and then you are going to force everyone to watch it again on Christmas day?" I replied sweetly, "of course." and that was the end of that. I mean really, who can EVER watch too much White Christmas? Not I.
And here is the finished product




I do have more to tell of my Christmas kitchen exploits, but alas that will have to wait till later. So, tune in next time to see pictures of the infamous Mama Collins orange rolls and cinnamon rolls. My first attempt at making these yummy goody - the ultimate aroma of Christmas!

L'Escalade

This evening Josh and I bravely headed to Old Town Geneva to watch the Escalade parade. I say bravely because it was pouring down rain all day long until about 4 p.m. at which point we said, "Do we risk it?" and, naturally, the answer was an emphatic, "bien sur!" (of course!). Ok, maybe it wasn't that emphatic, in fact, to be quite honest both of us had sort of settled into that lazy, gray, rainy day dull-drums and didn't really feel like leaving the house...but, then we thought, "hey, this happens once a year. What if we don't get a chance to see it again?" So we went. We're both glad that we did.
So, I guess I should explain what L'escalade is. In 1602 the Duke of Savoy attacked the walled city of Geneva. His attack started the night of December 11 (technically it was December 12 because supposedly it was after midnight). They launched their attack by climbing up ladders to breach the wall - hence l'escalade, which literally means the climbing. The best part of this story is that those sneaky Savoyards were foiled by the alert citizens of Geneva. Legend has it that Mere Royaume, the mother of 14 children, saw the mercenaries scaling the wall and dropped her large cauldron of hot soup on the soldier, thus killing the first Savoyard in the battle to save Geneva. To honor her, chocolate cauldrons filled with marzipan vegetables are sold. I believe these are called Marmites. It is tradition for the youngest and oldest child in the room to smash the chocolate cauldron while yelling, ""Ainsi périssent les ennemis de la République! " (Thus perish the enemies of the Republic). Unfortunately, we didn't witness this because, well we were standing on the packed street watching a parade of 17th century clad folks marching by.
Yeah, did I mention that? Sunday evening they have this HUMONGOUS parade that winds its snake-like way through the Old town. Everyone is dressed in 17th Century costumes, there are horse-back riders, men carrying tall javelin-esque spears, Mere Royaume marches by with her cauldron of soup, kids carry poles aflame to light the procession, horses and donkeys pull various carts some loaded down with cannons and other weapons, some displaying their patriotism with flags and the swiss colors. It's a good deal of fun.
Another tradition is that kids dress up, like kids in the U.S. do at Halloween - though I'd say there are more cute animals and less scary ghost, goblins, and witches. Supposedly, the kids often go along collecting money by singing at cafes and in the streets. We did not personally witness any singing for money or otherwise, but we saw a bunch of adorable kids in costume. Most notably, the cutest little penguin ever seen! Here's a picture of my favorite little flame bearer. I just thought he was adorable! I also thought, "Man, they really trust those kids! I don' t think they could get away with 9 year old boys (I have NO idea how to judge the ages of kids) being in charge of flames with no apparent supervision!" But, hey these kids did a great job. They seemed to know exactly what was going on and what they needed to do. Impressive.

So, that's my version of L'Escalade. We enjoyed it immensely. Oh, and the parade stops at certain places and one of those fancy horsemen reads a proclamation. I have no idea what he said because it was, of course, in French. But I did hear un mille six cent deux (1602) and joyeux (joyous) and it closed with a rousing "Vive la Suisse" immediately leading into the crowds surrounding us bursting into song. I'm told it is the Geneva "anthem" which is a song about this great victory and, to me sounds like we stole the melody for our very own "My Country tis of Thee", which is written to the same tune as "God Save the Queen" so perhaps the Swiss filched it from the English or vice versa - who knows. I think it was pretty standard back in the day to have just a few melodies floating around and people making up different lyrics to them. I seem to feel as though someone musically inclined told me that when I was working at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Then again, I could be completely out of my mind! So, don't feel you have to believe anything I say.

Marché de Noël

We had a fabulous day on Saturday visiting the Christmas Market in Montreux, Switzerland. It was so cute! There were all these little wooden Chalets lined up around the lake selling food, crafts, wine, etc. Although it began to rain lightly shortly after we got there it didn't deter or dampen our spirits. We wandered around for nearly 3 hours and finished up the majority of our Christmas shopping. I took tons of pictures, so be prepared!
Here's me next to a very cool tower made up entirely of firewood! It was right in the "food court" area. You enter this little gate and you are suddenly ensconced in the delicious smells of mouth-watering treats. Each "chalet" has something different: chocolate, wine, sausages, fois gras, churros, fondue, raclette, hot wine, you name it it was there. All these food chalets were in a large circle and in the center was a big wooden pavilion with tables and benches where you could eat. Some of the food vendors had their own stalls with tables as well. Here's Josh with some food chalets behind him- aren't they so adorable? Oh yeah, he's cute too, but look at those little Christmas chalets!
Somehow we managed to make it through this area without succumbing to the intoxicating smells emanating from every single stand. We even managed to hold off buying tea, even though it was cool, it was brewed over an open fire! And check out all those hanging sausages!
Lucky for our wallets we happened upon a sculptor who used a chainsaw to create his wooden sculptures. It was our good fortune to happen upon him just as he was starting a new sculpture. It was pretty cool to watch.




We watched for a while then figured we might as well continue on and come back later in the hopes of seeing the finished project. Our guess was that he was making an owl. What do you think? I think it's a pretty darn good guess. Unfortunately, by the time we made it back he had packed up all his statues and equipment and left. Probably due to the rain more than anything else. Then again, we did take our sweet time getting back - buying gifts for people can do that to you. We then ran into a sight to behold - a HUGE candy buffet. Oh the one at my wedding was nothing in comparison to this glutton festival for the eyes and tummy. Yum.....


Yet, even this did not tempt me to open my wallet. Well, it did tempt me, but I soldiered on. Until I saw this:

Roasted Chestnuts! The sign says something like: Chestnuts grilled the ancient way.
These chestnuts smelled wonderful and I had heard how wonderfully tasty roasted chestnuts were so this was where I insisted we stop and have a snack. We shelled out the 6 chf for a paper cone full of freshly roasted chestnuts and were prepared to be overwhelmed by the scrumptious taste of Chestnuts roasted the old way. We were rather disappointed I'm afraid. They tasted alright, but they were a bit dry and not exactly something I'd shell-out 6 francs for again. Oh well, we tried them. I mean who could pass up chestnuts roasted in clay pots over cylindrical metal tubes?
Moving right along we wandered from one little chalet full of beautiful gift ideas to another until we came to the famous statue of Montreux (pronounce montrow, by the way).

Yeah baby, Freddy Mercury. Lead singer of Queen. The people of Montreux love their Freddy Mercury- you can see the fresh flowers and gifts they leave at the statues feet. Someone had even tied a pair of ballet shoes onto Freddy's cane, I have no idea what that's all about.
Yeah, yeah, I know that you've already seen a ton of pictures - probably more than you wanted to look at- but I still have more so I guess you'll just have to deal. Coming up pictures of the little ice rink that put up every year. Josh and I contemplated skating, but it was getting late, it was rainy and we still hadn't seen everything yet. So after a quick break to drink some lip-smacking, yummy hot chocolate and kiss the fake deer we moved on.

We happened upon a smokehouse that was smoking Salmon. This was the Finland section apparently with a "Finland" restaurant across the path from the Salmon smokehouse.

OK, I will leave you with these parting images. There was one section that was underneath a GIGANTIC wooden pavilion. There was a train kids could ride, more stalls selling gifts, and two sides filled with food. There was a whole row of food in these humongous pans. It looked awesome. We didn't stick around that area too long because despite the fact that we weren't hungry the sight and smell of such massive quantities of food started working overtime on our saliva glands.

Look at that big barrel o' wine. Doesn't it make you want to just drink right from the spigot? Josh, of course, had to dragged away from the sauerkraut and ham mixture. With those parting thoughts I am going to turn my own thoughts towards dinner. I have been working on this damn post ALL day long. Geeze, it's ridiculous how adding so many pictures can take such a long time! and to think I had ideas for 2 more posts that I wanted to do today I'll be lucky if I EVER get around to posting them. sigh, the trials of being a self-centered blogger. hee, hee!
Hope this put you in the Christmas mood just as much as the actual trip put me in holiday spirits. Now that I think of it, maybe I'll go check out the Christmas decorations we borrowed form our neighbors before dinner.

À bientôt!

Not much to say

Sorry, but there's not a whole lot going on around here. Yesterday I spent most of my day busily working on some homemade Christmas gifts. I would post pictures but you never know who might look at my blog and who the gifts might be for! hee, hee. Today I've been puttering around the house trying to pick up, AGAIN, and baking cookies. Our upstairs neighbor is sick so I thought I'd take her some cookies, probably chicken soup would be more helpful but cookies just taste SO much better! Also, the CERN dancing club has a little monthly party after our class tonight and it's "Canadian" style - which means bring some food to share. They have one every month and we have yet to attend so we thought we'd hang out for a bit tonight and see what it's like. Maybe we'll get to know some people in our class a little bit better, that'd be nice.
Isn't it funny that a bring a dish to pass type event is called a Canadian - I love it. It makes me laugh every time I see it or hear it. I think we should start instituting that phrase in the States. I wonder how the Canadians would feel about that? I mean why Canadians? are they the cheapskates of the world who ask their guests to bring food for their parties? I have no idea why they call them Canadian parties, and neither does our Canadian neighbor.
So, sorry I'm not more full of rollicking good stories or witty criticisms about life, but things are bit dull at the moment as I busily work away at completing my Christmas projects in the hopes of getting them sent off in time to make it to their destinations by Christmas - fat chance o this happening so sorry to anyone who might receive a gift - but I'll try my darnedest. Darnedest, what a great word.
OK, so I'm going to get back to my projects if anything exciting happens this weekend you'll be the first to know.

Ciao!

A few small accomplishments

So, this weekend turned out to be a quiet weekend at, again, despite the fact that we had planned a busy weekend. We were going to go to a Milonga dance workshop on Saturday. The Milonga is, apparently, the simpler, faster dance that spawned the Argentine Tango. Our Tango teachers run these workshops every few months or so. I will digress here for a moment to gush over our Tango teachers, Paola and Domenico. I love them. They are just too cute and they think we're a step ahead of the rest of the class - at least my cutie Domenico does. I told Josh at our Friday night class that I wanted to give Domenico kisses. You might think this sounds like a strange comment to make to your husband about another man, but what I meant was those three little air kisses that Europeans always give each other in greeting and farewell. I always feel excepted when Europeans give me these little air kisses. Even though I know that they don't really mean anything here because people do it all the time, it's like a handshake, but I feel very European when I get a chance to give kisses! I know, I'm a dork, what can I say?
So, it turns out Paola's mother's sick so the workshop was canceled - postponed till next Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes (if I remember to post, that is). So that left Saturday open. So, we did a bunch of cleaning and rearranging and I knit a Christmas stocking for Josh! Isn't it soooo cute? I think it's adorable. I had to make it out of random yarn I had left or, thus the sort of random stripeyness - but I like it. When I added the lighter blue color I had a few misgivings because it suddenly became highly reminiscent of Hiram College's colors of red and Columbia blue (read powder blue) all that this little baby needs now to become an official Hiram stocking is to attach a little Terrier in a "Columbia" blue sweater vest!
Doesn't it look so perfect hanging by the fire? Now I just need to make one for myself.
So, that pretty much covers Saturday. Sunday we had planned to splurge by attending a Wine and Food fair in Villeneuve, Switzerland. It's about an hours drive on the opposite side of lake Geneva (or Lac Leman as it is known to the Swiss -which begs the question why do the English change the names of everything? Like English people can't say Leman? It's absurd...). Unfortunately, when I called half way through the week to reserve our tickets for this glutton fest I was informed it was full. Boohoo, I was so looking forward to strolling through the old city of Villeneuve where we would stop at 10 different locations and sample a variety of foods and wines at each place. Next year we are signing up well in advance. So, instead of a fun "European" wine and food orgy we hung out at home with a roaring fire all day. It was fairly cold, so maybe we were better off missing the festival - yeah, keep telling yourself that maybe some day you'll believe it! Instead I spent most of my day like this. Isn't Ally just the
cutest thing ever? Don't be jealous. I know she's the most adorable dog alive, but that doesn't mean your dog isn't cute too...just not as adorably cute as mine.
And this is the, "OK, stop taking pictures of me while I'm lying around like a sloth looking scuzzy and unkempt." You know you have given that look to your spouse before - or maybe you were the one receiving it! I did do a bit more than snuggle on the couch with Ally and a book. I made my first attempt at making Ratatouille - sort of vegetable soup popular in Provence. I figured while in France we should make some sort of effort to eat like the French. It turned out pretty well, although it's less like soup and more like large chunks of vegetables in very little liquid. Nonetheless is was eatable and I think we'll make it again.
Well, I know this has been incredibly exciting for you so I will leave you with a few pictures of my other great accomplishment of last week - pictures of my finished shawl! Yay! It only took me 7 months to make - oi vay.

Here's an extreme close-up so you can see the lace pattern. Here I am displaying my shawl.

Yes, that is Mickey mouse on my butt, and yes, I am still wearing my pajamas at 1:30pm on a Monday. Hey, don't get upset with me just because I have no social life. Not everyone is cut out for a life of slothfulness, a life devoid of human contact but full of doggy breathe. I'm sorry, I'm just lucky that way - truly, it's not my fault. Well, have a good day and I'll try to be better about posting for those desperate to read about my amazing life- ha, ha, ha

update continued....

Let's see, for those of you interested I shall continue with a run down of the weeks events.

Thursday: Joy of joys Josh took the day off from work and we headed into Geneva to see if we might get a little Christmas shopping done. Unfortunately, we weren't terribly successful but it was a fun day nonetheless. We decided to drive to CERN then grab the #9 bus down into Geneva. The disadvantages of driving right now is that there is massive road construction going on and the Genevoise are crazy. For example, if a major road in a city were under construction to the extent that there were multiple intersections where the stop lights were not in use any rational city would have workers directing traffic or put up a temporary light - not true in Geneva. It's a mad dash free for all. You just have to try and cross the intersection when you can. The buses are the worst, they just come barreling through. In fact, on Tuesday I nearly got run down by one as it careened around the corner trying to beat all the other traffic! So, it's advisable to be on the bus rather than driving next to at present. I want to take a moment here to state the bus system in Geneva is wonderful - it is definitely one of the good things about living in anther country. I wanted to take a picture but then I thought I might look like a crazy tourist lady taking pictures of everything in site, which in turn might make me a target for any stray pickpockets still wandering the city (they usually evacuate Geneva in the winter as it's the summer months that attract tourists). We went to Bel Air cité ,
which is the main shopping district in Geneva. Naturally, it has all the normal clothing & toy stores you'd find in any city along with all the high end, designer label stores with employees who look askance at you if you enter in your obviously hand-knitted wool hat and scarf and look like a pennyless waif. I know you'll find it surprising to learn we avoided these stores. Although we weren't entirely successful in finding gifts for other people we did succeed wonderfully in buying stuff for ourselves! Isn't that terrible? We go out looking for gifts and we mainly get things for us! Granted, a needed pair of gloves for Josh and a new pair of knitting needles for me isn't exactly extravagant, but it wasn't exactly to purpose of our trip. After wandering through shop after shop in search of those oh so elusive fabulous Christmas gifts we decided we'd had enough of the cold, the wind, and the shopping and headed home.
This is our standard reaction to a long, and unfruitful day of shopping.We then spent a lovely evening drinking pink champagne and playing UNO. I'm a still a little sore about this. Some of our family and friends might be aware the fact that Josh and I have an on going Uno tournament. Currently, I am about 400 points behind. But in all fairness it has not as much to do with Josh's skills at Uno as his outrageous luck. Look at the hand he was dealt!

Yeah, look at Josh acting all surprised, like he hadn't stacked the deck....oh, wait....he didn't I dealt him that hand. His luck is just out of control. I played ONE card this hand and picked up...hmmm....let's see 14 cards! It's almost enough to make me turn away from Uno forever, but there's still that part of me that says, "some day you will get your revenge. Patience is a virtue."
So, in closing, send me positive thoughts about winning Uno and if you have any helpful hints pass those along as well. Some day I will crush him like a bug, I'm just building him up so that the day of ultimate destruction will be felt all the more. hee, hee, hee (insert evil laughter here).