Buddy, Buddy, and Katie...

This is Uncle Kyle and Aunt Katie... Yep, they are this cute in real life.

Right now, Buddy Ronnie is staying at home with Aunt Katie and Uncle Kyle (sometimes called Buddy), probably having the time of his life.

Just another reminder to Buddy's caretakers... No, you can't keep him... Yes, he's always this loving... and Yes, we do miss him.

Busy much?!

It is the holiday season again, and I love it! Although you wouldn't know the winter holidays were upon us with the current temperature in Southern California, 75 and sunny. I only know the temperature because I have a little thermostat on my computer, we haven't been spending that much time outside as of late. A few weeks ago, Justin booked our flights to VA for Christmas and I have been looking forward to our two week vacation. Little did I know it was coming sooner than I had thought.

I've been a little absent-minded this week, not sure if it's just because I'm pre-occupied with visually packing for our trip (Am I the only who does this, visualizing which clothes you're going to pack?), or just that work has been pretty hectic (all the way up until Friday, Fridays are always slow). But I somehow managed to convince myself we were leaving for our trip a whole day later than we actually are. I was under the impression we were leaving on Saturday night, thus leaving me pretty much the whole day to pack, clean, etc.

Imagine my surprise when Justin and I were talking about packing for our trip (at about 10:30 Thursday night) and he asks when I was planning on doing that (I had work the next day). I told him Saturday... cue confusing looks. I checked back on our email confirmations and sure enough, we're scheduled to take the red-eye Friday night. Cue mass panic on my part (not totally necessary by the way). All is well now, after staying up a whole hour and a half longer then I intended. As fate would have it, God knew how truly off my rocker I am this week. I decided to hit up Target Thursday night to get the stuff I needed for our trip, all the while I'm still thinking we leave Saturday. Funny how those little things work themselves out.

We have everything ready to go and house-sitters in place. Yep, this year we decided to call in some reinforcements to help with Ronnie and stay at our place while we're gone. My brother's girlfriend, Katie came to our rescue and I know he'll be in good hands with her. Much happier than any other option we had (I seriously considered bringing him with us, for about two minutes). Our choice last year was to take him to our friends' house to stay in a new environment... he was traumatized, but did okay.

So, goodbye blog world... I have some posts scheduled to go up while we're gone and may check in a time or two. Have a merry christmas and a happy new year!

The Bloom Book Club

For the past few months I've been feeling there is something more that I could be doing in relationship with God. I felt like I was grasping at straws in my attempts to start any new habits. It usually lasted for a few days, maybe a week.

The problem is that I am doing this on my own, with no accountability. I'm realizing now that this isn't a good way to start anything to make a habit of. I came across this online book club a few months ago, but they had already started their selection. I told myself I'd check back again later. Later ended up being today and what would you know, I'm just in time to start the new book!

It's called, Same Kind of Different As Me written by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. I'm excited to get started and see how this works out! If you're interested in learning more about The Bloom Book Club, you can start here!

Etsy Love...

I've recently developed a love-affair with Etsy, an online shopping website for sellers to display their craftsmanship.

I really think I might just do all my Christmas shopping there, I love it! I'll start compiling a list of some of my favorite sellers, and then you can check them out as well!

www.etsy.com

Edited to Add:

<---If you check out Maria... over on the left... that will show you to some of MY Favorite Things.

Resident Bug Killer

Our resident bug killer in all his glory... doesn't he look menacing?

More recently our bugs have consisted of ants... lovely. Ronnie likes to step on them and sometimes he will eat them. The stepping seems to be effective, I just follow him with the vacuum. It's good team work!

He'll be turning two in January and is still just as funny as ever. This is actually his new favorite toy...

...$2 from the grocery store... it's a ball, with a hole in the top. He likes it. We put his treats in there and he'll spend however long it takes him (usually not very long) to get them out. That pretty much sums him up these days... bugs, balls, and oh yeah... messes. He seems to have taking a liking to knocking things over... he keeps us on our toes!

Don't Panic...

At the beginning of the summer, if you'll remember correctly we moved to a new community in Irvine. We love wear we live, it's really urban, and close proximity to the freeway. Being walking distance from Starbucks, the grocery store, and other fine establishments such as Chipotle is a big factor as well. There are four buildings in our community, ours always seems to be the one to get the most 'action.' Case in point: early this morning at about 2am, the fire alarm for the building went off. No fire, someone just pulled the fire alarm. Lovely. Too bad it took the fire department THIRTY MINUTES to turn the system off.

It was pretty loud in our apartment, Ronnie had firmly stationed himself underneath our bed and wasn't planning on coming out any time soon. I threw on some shoes and a sweatshirt to see what was going on outside while Justin tried to dismantle the alarm inside our apartment. I had to laugh when I walked outside as I noticed groggy people standing around, trying to keep hold of their dogs and small children. Every once in a while, the elevator would come down with a new load of passengers. That's what was making me laugh... isn't that what every safety precaution tells you not to do in an emergency situation? I did find the fire truck had arrived. Clearly there was no fire and they were working on turning the alarm off. As I said, this lasted for about thirty minutes and we realized the smoke alarm in our apartment cannot be disengaged... bummer.

Even after the alarm had stopped, Ronnie was adamant about not leaving our bedroom. At the slightest sound he would come flying back in and dive underneath the covers. Of course he has discovered that I won't push him away, thus he always snuggles up on my side of the bed. Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well last night.

Comparison Shopping...

If you know me at all, you know I love to find good deals on trendy styles. On rare occasions (very rare) I will splurge on an item that I've been coveting. But that's only after watching the price for months praying that it would go down, scouring the sale racks, and of course searching through Target and Old Navy for similar styles.

I think this is a pretty good example: take this blazer from J Crew. I like it a lot, and it's versatile. Of course I can never have too many jackets. I would even venture to say that I could be cold-blooded (or just a vampire), but that's a whole different post entirely. I originally saw it in the J Crew catalog which I subscribe to and love (it's free, try it out). The price point for this lovely is $215.00. That's as of right now. And it's only available online and via catalog, which raises the price even more for shipping, etc. By the time it get's to my dollar range, I'll be shopping for swim suits in April.

I didn't actually have to search all that hard for a similar blazer, it landed right in my inbox. I subscribe to emails from Old Navy and this little dear showed up as featured item. Price point: $39.95. MUCH better, right? Right.