Abandoned

Is that how you're feeling?  My regular readers?  I'm sorry I've been neglectful, but not sorry enough to sit down and write more often.  My main excuse lately is that when I was unable to get on my blog recently, I began researching our next home trip and you all know that when I start doing that, you've lost me.  I spend any free time I have looking for hotels, cars, flights, cruises, tours, whatever!  I've had great success and I'm getting it done almost too fast.  I must leave some for later:).

On the weekend we had a birthday party for Nicholas with his closest friends in attendance and it was a lot of fun.  I tried doing a few games but mostly the boys just wanted to play with toys.  That was fine.  I did the games for the two six-year-old girls that actually wanted to participate and they got all the prizes.

After the party Tim decided we should put up our Christmas tree.  Already.  It was only November 17th!  I told him I was too tired so he said we would just set it up but we would decorate it tomorrow.  We got out the tree that our friends, Jessica and Chris, gave to us when they left Shenyang a couple weeks ago.  It was a pre-lit tree that looked like it would be very pretty, but we soon realized that we hadn't gotten a stand to go with it.  Luckily, we happened to have a second tree that Anna and Dave left with us when they vacated China and it did have a stand so we borrowed that one for the first tree.  We got the thing partially assembled only to discover that the adapter to plug it into the wall was missing, making the lights and fiber optics useless.  We decided that this poor tree just wasn't meant to be used for anyone besides it's rightful owners, so we scrapped it and set up Dave and Anna's little tree.  Well, once it was up the kids, of course, wanted to put lights, garland and decorations on it so in the end the whole thing got finished that evening.  It's incredibly pretty and makes the place feel so cozy that I may never want to leave.  We need a better star on the top, preferably one that lights up, but for now it's just perfect.

Sunday I got out to do some window shopping.  Mostly I was just trying to locate a store that had what I was looking for but with little luck.  It was nice to get out on my own for a bit anyway.

Aside from the busy weekend, I haven't been doing too much.  It's colder here now (-5C last night) so I feel like I need to hibernate.  I've got my hot water bottle and Spiderman blanket handy and am really enjoying snuggling on the couch with one or two of my boys, watching Christmas shows.  I guess that's one nice thing about this time of year.

I am slowly getting more decorations put up but I don't have any pictures right now.  I will post as I get more done.  I guess that's it for now.  Talk soon!