Cookies-a-plenty

For the 2nd year in a row - Gingerbread men, missing an arm or leg, some even lost their head.

 New this year - Peppermint candy canes

 Sugar balls - basically a sugar cookie with a powdered sugar glaze and "sprinkles"

 Also new - Rum Balls, but with imitation Rum instead of the real stuff.

 Oldie but a goodie - Sinckerdoodles

 Traditional cookies added to the mix - Peanut butter, Choc. Chip and Funfetti with green food coloring



2nd Annual Wii Tournament

Tournament of the Wii 

(hopefully becoming bi- or tri-annual)

It is always fun to have people over to our place. Saturday evening the Price's and Agadoni's came over to enjoy some awesome tacos/burritos along with chips and salsa for dinner.

Allowing time for digestion (didn't want anyone to get a cramp) we sat and swapped stories for awhile. Finally it was time. The Price's had to relinquish the trophy that they had been hiding away for a year and it was finally up for grabs again.

The tournament was some fierce competition this year. But The Hutchins were victorious! The trophy is displayed proudly atop their entertainment center.

 While there was not time to play with fondant this year we merely made a 12 story high Christmas Tree out of cookies. Desert was enjoyed by all.

O Christmas Tree

Rain! Rain and Rain!

We braved the rain to go get our beautiful Christmas tree. It almost didn't happen as it began pouring. Paul and I figured we would just get in and out as quick as possible, open up no more than a few trees and just pick one! We walked two feet inside the Home Depot lot and found ourselves ankle deep in puddles. Hummmm, well there was no going back now, we were already soaked.

Quickly as possible we found ourselves a tree to take home, and made a stop at Albertsons for some groceries. Paul hauled the tree inside while I went to find the stand (we were planning on just having the tree lot do it for us but they didn't have any stands).

  Gizmo being part of the family decided he needed to check out the tree so he found himself alone, locked in our room. There was a Christmas miracle when Paul was able to get the tree into its stand and it wasn't leaning or anything. Finally Gizmo was allowed to come out and fully inspect his first full sized Christmas tree.

Musically Talented

 In mid-December we enjoyed an evening at Starbucks listening to 4 Stories. It was great to see "old" friends again and to enjoy some traditional Christmas songs along with their original works.



Cookie Time @ The Hennings

The girls decorating (very serious business), telling stories, eating and having a good time.

The children played.

The men watched fooseball

My cookies.

Tree Lighting @ Biola

Performances, Carols, The Christmas Story, "Snow", Hot Cider, Friends, Good Times!

For My Love

Eastside: Everglades and South Beach

Eastside: Suprise

When we got back to our cabin each night there was a gift on our beds.

(I cant get the photos to rotate and upload properly)

Burrr, it's cold out here!

Just this past Tuesday we attended what will probably be the last
Movie On The Fox!

For those of you in the dark the Fox Fullerton puts on a movie every month and asks for donations to go towards restoring the historic theatre. Well the Fox will begin restoration this coming year which is both good and bad news. Good that it will be restored, bad because I will miss sitting out in the parking lot with friends under a blanket and sipping coffee while watching a flick.

Those putting on the show sell raffle tickets before the show. Many of us purchased a few raffle tickets each. We came out winners! Disney memorabilia for Emily and us, a blue-ray player for Jeri.

Bookworm

Apparently most people haven't read more than 6 of the 100 books on this list. Most of the ones I have read was required reading for High School. I'm thinking maybe I will just start selecting books from here to read for the new year...


I have read the books in BOLD.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins Love this one:The Father of the Modern Detective!!!!!!
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

2 days before December

One of my favorite times of year, getting all the Christmas letters and photo cards! Some people got an extra early start because we received our first two of the season on Nov. 29th. Looking forward to opening my mailbox everyday this month because there is bound to be a friend inside.