Christmas Gift Tags

16 December 2008, 9:08 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things

Kika tagged me for these Christmas questions.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Bags. They are reusable, and they get through airport security easier. And the corners don’t tear.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
Artificial. And you buy them after Christmas for the future years. And you can put more lights on them because the needles don’t fall off when you do it.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Day after Thanksgiving.

4. Do you like eggnog?
I do. But I dilute it with milk. I’ve tried the Sprite thing. I know several people who dilute it with Sprite. But it’s just not what I like. Milk is better.42D

5. Favorite gift received as a child?
There are a lot I remember.

6. Hardest person to buy for?
Generally any male.

7. Easiest person to buy for?
Probably my mom.

8. Do you have a nativity scene?
Several. And I’m always getting more. I even leave one or two out year round.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Mail. Definitely mail. Need to get that thing out soon.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I have no idea.

11. Favorite Christmas Movie?
There are a few I like. I don’t know that I’d say I have a favorite.

12. When do you start shopping?
I shop all year long. I make my presents, so I’m always looking for ideas and supplies.

13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Since I make them, probably not.

14. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Cheese balls, eggnog, fudge, sweet rolls, mint M&Ms, hot chocolate, apple cider…

15. Lights on the tree?
Of course. The more the merrier. And colored. Although I toy with the idea of white.

16. Favorite Christmas song?
O Holy Night. Oh Come Let Us Adore Him. Silent Night. Away in a Manger.

17. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Right now I travel to my parents house for Christmas. Being on an educators schedule makes it easy. But when I have my own family, I’ll stay home. Christmas is for family and home.

18. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s?
yup

19. Angel on the tree top or a star?
I have an angel right now that I made when I was in Young Women’s. But I think I’d like a star instead. I’ll have to see about making one of those.

20. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Morning? We get up around 10am at my house. So it’s almost noon before we start opening presents. It’s a holiday! Why wake up early?

21. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
I love Christmas music. Don’t doubt that. But I do NOT like Christmas music on the radio. And I do not like Christmas in the stores. And blinky lights. Blinky lights are annoying.

21a. Favorite things from Christmas?
I like the lights. I love Christmas lights (as long as they don’t blink). And luminarios (more with the lights).

22. Favorite ornament theme or color?
I kind of think most tree themes look fake, not real, contrived. I like my trees how I like my houses, looking lived in and comfortable. Some people can pull off the theme thing though. I guess you can say my tree has a theme – homemade. Almost all of the ornaments on my tree are homemade, and almost all of them by me (there’s nobody else around to be making them).

23. Favorite for Christmas dinner?
I love the food. But I love the wind-up toy and cracker on my plate too.

24. What do you want for Christmas this year?
I never really know how to answer that question. I don’t really like that question.

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Things I wonder about?

8 December 2008, 7:54 pm by Giggles
Categories: Learn Something

Why does an iron work? I can understand the steam I think. So maybe a dry iron is similar.

Why do people say you look familiar when you know darn well that they’ve never met you before in their life? I was introduced to someone recently and he said he thought he knew me. I told him that maybe I just have one of those faces, because he’d definitely never met me before. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Probably would’ve been better if he’d just said, “nice to meet you” at first rather than pretending he already knew me.

Why is it easier to lift things when you grunt? Just lifted a heavy box, and grunting definitely made it easier.

1 Shared thought

Christmas Music Box Party

6 December 2008, 11:39 pm by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Relationships

The story goes that when my family moved to our new house in 1982, there was a shelf above a staircase that my parents didn’t know what to put on when Christmas came around. So they decided to put a music box on it. Since then, every Christmas Eve, we open a new music box. We alternate between religious and secular ones each year. We have so many different ones. And some from different trips too. My brother one in Chicago when he was there with his high school band one year.

When I left home for college, I decided I wanted to do it too. I got my first one in 1998, a snowman water globe. The next year I didn’t get one, but I was in Brasil that year. The following year, while I was still in Brasil, my mom sent me one though. It was a tin with a music box in the lid. I was home with my parents all of December 2001, so I didn’t get one that year. But I started back again in 2002 with a nativity that we dubbed the “Spastic Silent Night” because when I bought it, it played real fast with no slowing down before it stopped. Heidi fixed it though so it sounds more normal now. That was followed by a snowman water globe, an angel water globe, snowmen skating, a curved nativity, and a very tall Santa last year.

The only issue is, I buy the music box and I wrap it. And I’m not at my home on Christmas Eve, I’m at my parents’. So I’ve altered the tradition a bit to fit my situation right now. I still buy it and wrap it. But then I have a party for my friends in December and I ask one of them to open it for me. I’ve really enjoyed the parties over the years. It’s one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season.

Tonight was this year’s party. I have put up the pictures and more commentary on the static part of my site (ie, you can’t make comments on the photo page, but you could make some here).

Enjoy!

Christmas Music Box Party 2008 Photos

42D

Oh, and I got some cute new shoes and some real fun socks too.

And yes, “have party” was on my to-do list today. I’m at the point where I have to keep a rather detailed to-do list or things don’t get done. As soon as there isn’t so much to do I’ll be able to calm down with my lists. I just think it is kind of funny that I had to put something like that on my list.

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Statistical Nightmares

4 December 2008, 9:35 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Learn Something

Ever wonder what happens when you spend 8 hours working on a statistics test until one in the morning (after working on it for four hours previously and still spending another six hours on it later) and then go right to bed? No? Me either. But I know.

The ten question, twenty page, forty-eight sub-part test!

Tuesday night I went to bed just after 1 AM after having worked on that test since shortly after 3 in the afternoon. I was exhausted, to the point where it was starting to hurt.

So you’d think I’d sleep soundly. But nope. Instead I had dreams, horrible icky dreams.

I dreamed I was solving statistics. And it was going great! Except the laptops I was doing all the calculations on kept opening and closing on their own on me.

So I left my bedroom and went out to my computer, and the whole area was practically covered in moths!!! Bad evil moths that would get me! Have you seen those pictures where the tree trunk is covered in beautiful butterflies (like this one from Monarch Watch.org)? Imagine that, only my computer area and windows instead of a tree and scary ugly moths instead of beautiful butterflies. Oh the horror! I couldn’t get them with my puny fly swatter, so I got out bug spray.

Some nice people came and helped me kill all the moths. Then I was at their house. Never seen these people before in my life. They were nice people, but when I told them it was time for me to go home, instead of taking me to the airport so I could fly home, they locked me down in their basement, which was very well lit by the way.

In their basement they had cloned George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Abraham Lincoln. And they were all sword fighting! And they were going to attack me!

And that’s when I decided it was time to wake up and go do more statistics, so I got myself out of their basement and back to my room where the whole thing had started. I woke up, stumbled back in to the living room, and started to work on the test some more.

So let that be a lesson to you. Don’t do statistics right before bed!

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Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin (1917-2008)

3 December 2008, 9:49 pm by Giggles
Categories: Gospel

Elder Wirthlin passed away on Monday night. (news release, his life).

A little over a year ago he spoke on The Great Commandment at the October 2007 General Conference. It is a talk I hope not to soon forget. It is powerful to read, but watching it is even more powerful, and even still brings tears to my eyes (video).

At the 6:45 mark on the video he says, “Sometimes the greatest love is not found in the dramatic scenes that poets and writers immortalize. Often, the greatest manifestations of love are the simple acts of kindness and caring we extend to those we meet along the path of life.”

About a minute and a half later (approximately 8:20) you can watch as one of those simple acts of kindness and caring is extend to him from one of his brothers in the twelve who cares a great deal for him. It is not a dramatic scene that will be immortalized by poets and writers. It is simply extending a supporting arm for someone who is struggling. And that arm was there for him for as long as he was going to need it.

It is a beautiful talk on loving others, but also on the love our Heavenly Father has for us, His children.

“We see ourselves in terms of yesterday and today. Our Heavenly Father sees us in terms of forever. Although we might settle for less, Heavenly Father won’t, for He sees us as the glorious beings we are capable of becoming.”

“The most cherished and sacred moments of our lives are those filled with the spirit of love. The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life.”

“Do you love the Lord? Spend time with Him. Meditate on His words. Take His yoke upon you. Seek to understand and obey.”

“Love is the greatest of all the commandments-all others hang upon it. It is our focus as followers of the living Christ. It is the one trait that, if developed, will most improve our lives.”

What wonderful words on love from a man who loved much and was loved much. He will be missed.

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Tagless

2 December 2008, 1:29 pm by Giggles
Categories: Books, Education, Exercise, Family, Folks, Gospel, Health, Life, Meme, Quilting/Sewing/Knitting/Crafting, Relationships, Science & Tech

I think memes are interesting just from the folklore aspect of them. Over the last month or so I’ve seen several on friends’ blogs. And I was even tagged in one of them. So I’ll give a few of them a go right here.

Keep reading →

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The stars align

1 December 2008, 6:30 pm by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Science & Tech

Every so often the stars align and everything magically falls in to place.

Except it wasn’t the stars. It was the moon, Venus, and Jupiter. But this was the closest they are going to be for another five years or so. (Wired; Scientific American; Astronomy Picture of the Day; What’s Up – Getting Closer, One Week to Go, The Great Conjunction Night, When Worlds Converge, Did you see the great conjunction; Space Disco; BBC – Smiling Sky)

So I took my camera out to the end of the road I live on, which also happens to be where the edge of town and the edge of a national forest meet. So it’s a good place to watch the stars, and it’s only six miles from here. 🙂

A police officer pulled into the parking lot behind me to check out a car that had apparently been parked there for too long. I got to tell him about what it was he was looking at. There was another nice old man out there taking pictures, he had a bigger camera. And we talked a bit about it and he looked at my pictures. Astronomers are a real nice group.

6:13pm

Venus is the “star” on the bottom. Jupiter is the other “star.” These three objects are the brightest objects in any night sky.

Other photos:

As I told the other man taking pictures, you can’t help but look up and be awed.

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