O Christmas Tree (Various)

See those two little trees over there? That's about the extent of our Christmas tree set up this year (And the past 2 years as well). While we have a decently sized home, we don't exactly have room for a full-on Christmas tree at this point & so we get to decorate in other ways, such as with my little winter village. Jeff did say the other day that once the holidays are over, we should go all out & buy a ton more decoratives. I agree. Watch out after Christmas sales, here I come!

I don't think I wrote too much about it in earlier posts, but Jeff & I decided not to "do" Christmas this year. Instead, the intent was to save as much money as possible so as to pay off the debts we accumlated from the past year (including Christmas, where we went overboard). My mother-in-law was quite adamant about doing some sort of "Christmas" & here's what was decided by Jeff & his dad:

• Limit spending to $50 on each of the other two couples (his folks, his sister & boyfriend) so that only $100 total gets spent on each other
• Go out to dinner on Christmas Day somewhere (I'm a bit skeptical if this really happens)
• Each couple volunteers in some way (either by donating money, time or gifts) & lets everyone know what they did at Christmas dinner.

*Last weekend, Jeff & I each spent about $25 at Walmart (my favorite store!) on toys to be donated to the Salvation Army for the kiddos. I thought I would dread the day when I had kids of my own because I thought buying birthday/christmas presents would be way expensive. We actually bought quite a bit of stuff for the $50 we spent. And, I can't speak for Jeff, but I really enjoyed the shopping.

*Last week, I anonymously donated 16 hours of my Personal Leave to a co-worker who had none left & needed to take some time off so that her black eye (caused by her abusive husband) would heal without too many people knowing about it. My department & her department are also "adopting" her two boys so they can have some fun gifts from Santa.

*Tomorrow marks day one of two of my annual volunteer work in conjunction with the Coast Guard, stuffing stockings for homeless children. Tomorrow, Kat and I will arrive near 1pm to help sort all the donated goodies. On Saturday, we'll spend a couple hours helping to stuff over 2,000 stockings. It's chaos & I usually dislike it when I'm there, but I always feel good afterwards. And, well, now it's like a tradition that Kat & I do together. I don't want to quit this.

Today, I am thankful for:

1. Cooking my first pot roast
2. Having my last stamp camp of the year
3. No more rain for the next couple days
4. Dreaming about my next vacation
5. Going nearly a week without being "sick"

What irks me today:

The fact that the squeaky wheel gets the oil... We have a member where I work & she is really not a nice person. Just mention the name & people cringe. Seriously. I honestly do not understand why this person is still allowed to be a member. Anyways, in an effort to make something look better & it not working, things are more "messed up" than before I touched it. At least I didn't have to talk to her to explain what happened.