I'm back in Grand Rapids. I had an awesome Christmas break with family and friends. BC was beautiful, I loved the different climates. The lower mainland was very mild, but then you drive a little and you hit winter and a foot of snow. It was great. So I got a green and a white Christmas...the best of both worlds. I have tons of pictures to share, 200+ not to mention the pictures that my mom is going to send me. We both had our digital cameras along and were having fun playing around with them. So stay tuned for pictures, I'll post a handful. If you want the full treatment, I have them on my laptop :) Got to see a bunch of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, some of my friends, and had some good times with my immediate family. But now I'm back and need to get back into day to day life again, bleh. Hope everyone had a great Christmas :)

This morning when I woke up I looked out the window and saw that the world had been blanketed in snow while we were sleeping. So beautiful. The cars looked all snug and warm in their blankets. And you can't beat the drive to work, the trees looked so pretty. It's beginning to feel like Christmas, three more days till I head for home!

It is far too quiet here this afternoon. Everyone else has gone home for the day and I'm left here all on my own....Yikes, I don't like being here on my own...this creepy looking guy was just at the window so I locked the door. He's gone now, and I hope he doesn't come back. We're in the basement, so it's easy to see in our windows. Anyhow, that's not what I going to write about...hmm...I was thinking about the snow that is currently falling outside and I was thinking about Christmas, which will be here before we know it.

Ah yes, last night was our last GEMs night until after Christmas. We took the girls to Metropolitan hospital to go caroling. We asked the girls to bring some of their beanie babies and stuffed animals with them to give to patients, so as we caroled up and down the halls, the girls took turns giving the toys to people. It was a lot of fun, and I think the girls enjoyed it. I was amazed at how well-behaved they can be. But once we got back to the church they were back to racing around again. We had hot chocolate and I gave my girls cards and candycane reindeer. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, a candycane reindeer is a candycane with a brown pipecleaner for antlers and googly-eyes and a red nose. I also got to meet one of my girls' mothers, which is always nice.

Going back in time, Tuesday I did most of my Christmas shopping. Guam I think I did what you would classify as power shopping. Just some loose ends to tie up and my shopping will be done.

Further back, Sunday I decided to make the house more Christmas-y so I put up some lights and decorated my little pine tree. A rather small Christmas tree, but I think its kinda cute. Saturday I went to a Christmas party with Pat (for his work). And that brings us back to Friday which was Sinterklaas.

Thinking about Sinterklaas makes me hope that the Koogers have some fun Sinterklaas-like celebration in mind for when we're in Vancouver...that would be fun :) I can't wait till December 20th...only eight more days!

Happy Sinterklaas everyone!

*sigh* I wish I had my headphones with me... I bought the Return of the King soundtrack last night and was listening to it in my car. I popped it in as soon as I got out of Best Buy. Now I'm itching to drive home so I can listen to the rest of it...if only I had remembered to bring my headphones along today...

Wow, December 1st already...only 25 days till Christmas...how did that sneak up so fast?

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving weekend. I for one really needed that four day break. Too bad it couldn't have been a little longer :) Good company, good food, fun times. But DC is right, the house will seem very quiet. I like having lots of people around. And I like playing the part of the hostess, feeding people, arranging beds, etc, etc. It felt as though no one had left, like we all lived in Grand Rapids again. Its sad that everyone lives so far apart...

By the way, the reviews are in, and Thanksgiving dinner was a success. Though we were a little behind schedule...but good things come to those who wait, right?

Good morning everyone. One more day of work and then its Thanksgiving weekend, yey :) This year my roomie and I are being ambitious and cooking dinner for friends. Last night I tackled the pies. I've never made a pie before so I wasn't exactly sure what to do. But I followed the directions in the cookbook for apple pie and it seemed to work out ok. I was surprised at how little actually goes into a pie crust, only flour, salt, shortening and water. That's it.
So I mixed and rolled my crust according to the recipes suggestions. Now I just hope for the best. I'm hoping my crust will be flaky and not hard or dry, or soggy. We'll see when I bake it I guess :)

The pumpkin pie was easy. I bought the crust and all you have to do is mix everything together, dump it in and bake it. Couldn't be much easier than that. Baking is fun, tonight I'll mix up the dough for the rolls and set it to rising.

It's snowing! That makes me happy :) Keep it coming! It looks so pretty, so much better than dreary brown.

Yesterday was Wednesday so I had GEMs. Brought the girls' mirrors back (I brought them home to dry and to put hangers on the back), we had praise and worship to start, then we had a craft. Denise had a craft planned for us. We made thank you gifts for the teachers and leaders in the church. The girls got to make two, one for someone in the church and one to take home to give to someone. A lot of the girls had a hard time with this. Some wanted to take both home, others wanted to give them to each other... It was kind of tough telling the girls that they couldn't, but I think it's an important lesson that they need to learn. It's also hard to get them to think of people outside of their immediate family. So an interesting night.

Afterwards we had a counsellor meeting at one woman's house. That was a little strange. All the other counsellors are married with kids. I felt really young and free. They were talking about how difficult it is to get out... how more than twice in one week is plenty... And I'm thinking, only twice? Its kinda nice being able to go out whenever you want. I think I'll enjoy others peoples kids for awhile :)

*looks around groggily*

Bleh, I hate headaches. Especially when they wake me up. This morning I was awake at 5:30 because of my stupid head. So I stumbled around in the dark, found some water and drugs, swallowed and fell back into bed. But on the flip side, I slept much better from 5:30 to 8:30...a little too much better.

I had a dream that DC and I went to my place again. We were at church and there was this rock band playing on the balcony. All my friends were there too, and some were in the band. I remember them being good, but can't remember what they sounded like. Strange dreams.

Monday...*sigh* I had a good weekend though. Friday night Cathy and I went to Pete Brown's Office (we're becoming regulars there :) to see one of Cathy's friends play. That was a lot of fun, I met all kinds of cool people. But I didn't get home till after two, which was kinda bad cuz Saturday DC, Michelle, Stacy and I went shopping. We hit three different malls and were out for 12+ hours. Man were my feet tired :) But I got some new clothes which I really needed, so that's good.

Sunday morning I slept in...oops :) Cleaned up a bit in the afternoon then went to the Vesper service. Went out to dinner afterwards with my roomie then came home to watch CI, of course. Worked on my cats x-stitch which is going to take me forever...but it'll be worth it, I really like the pattern. Anywho, back to work now...

It's snowing! Well, not anymore, but it was when I drove in to work this morning. I can't wait for the snow to come :) It makes everything look so pretty. Much better than dreary brown.

Last night at GEMs was fun. I started off with the girls in two lines, facing each other. One side were mirrors and they had to mimic everything the other side was doing. Then we switched it around. The lesson was about being created in God's image and how we reflect God like mirrors. After our little game, I passed around the magazines with our lesson in it. The girls were not sitting in their chairs, so I said that whoever is sitting by the time I count to 10 gets a candy. That worked very well :) I'll have to remember that one. Our lesson continued the story about Josie that we've been reading all year. After some questions we got to the fun part. I bought some foam and mirrors and foam cutouts. I made frames for the mirrors out of black foam and had the girls decorate the frames with foam shapes. Heart, circles, squares, triangles, butterflies, dragonflies, ... The girls loved doing that, and it kept them quiet. We finished up our evening singing with the rest of the GEMs girls.

*breaths a big sigh of relief*

Its the weekend! Yey! That makes me so happy :) Talk about a roller coaster day. I worked on a total of four projects today. Not each one at a time, but on a rotating schedule. I worked on each one for about 10 minutes to half an hour, then switch! We've been getting things in three of our projects all synched up and my bosses were testing so we could push up a release tonight. So, boss 1 discovers an issue in project A, update, push up. Boss 2 discovers an error in project B, fix, push up. Boss 2 has a question about project C, take a moment to answer. Have a meeting for project D, drive over to client, come back, boss 1 is waiting with another issue, boss 2 has a couple more questions. Boss 1 finds some strange data in our database... And so on and so on, all day long.

*phew* This nutty (though strangely satisfying) day is over and I can go home and not think about work till Monday. Life is good.

GEMS

Last night was fun. I was missing two of my girls, but I think that last night was the rowdiest. One girl in particular...she was actually vibrating she had so much energy. She couldn't sit still for more than 2 minutes at a time. Tiring just to watch her.

But despite that, the girls had fun. We started out with a charades type game to illustrate the power of words. They really liked that. After the game I pulled out my candy jar. You should have seen their eyes :) When I said that they had to sit down before getting any candy, they quickly found their seats. Candy works well on these girls. As they were munching away, we managed to get through two lessons, which surprised me, cuz they were so loud. But they did come up with good answers so they were listening too. I think the girls are warming up to me now, they were sharing all kinds of stories with me about their friends and school. I'm getting to know them better too.

I'm looking forward to next week, cuz I have a craft planned that ties into the lesson quite nicely. I used to love doing crafts when I was a Calvinette, and I know the girls will love it too. Next week's lesson also suggests a great game that the girls will love. Planning lessons for my girls is a lot of fun cuz at this age they are so receptive.

Tonight I picked up two new CDs, The Essential Simon and Garfunkel and Natalie MacMaster - Blueprint. Mmm, good stuff. Now I need to take a roadtrip. Nothing like the listening to some good tunes and driving the open road.

One more day till the weekend, *sigh* Oh well, tomorrow's Friday, yey! For those of you who haven't discovered it yet, DC and I started a Coffee Break site, which we can all use to exercise our creative skills. If you want to join let us know and we can make you a member. Then you can add to our ongoing story. Or, just visit on occasion and read our story in progress. You'll have to read from the bottom up though, there is no way to reverse the ordering of the posts. Sorry, we tried.

Also, no GEMs update this week, we didn't have a meeting last night.

Last night, or rather this morning, I had a very strange dream. Not strange in and of itself, strange in the realness of it. At the beginning I was out shopping somewhere. I returned to the parking lot and got into a vehicle, I believe it was a minivan. At this time I was all by myself. Then my dream sort of morphed into a roadtrip with girls from my dorm my freshman year. I'm not sure where we were going, but as we were driving, the vehicle changed into a full size van. A little bit later, a bunch of kids appeared and my parents too. Then my three kids showed up. Yes, that's right, my three kids. I don't know where that came from. In my dream I don't recall there being a father for them around anywhere. It was just me and the kids. I had a three year old girl and one year old twins, a boy and a girl. The twins were quite remarkable, they were walking and talking in full sentences. Kind of eerie now that I think about it. I remember we all had to sit around a table, I think for dinner but first I had to change the little boy's diaper.

Ever have dreams that felt so real it was almost scary? This was one of those dreams. Not sure where my subconscious was going with this one, but I'm not entirely sure I like it either. I mean why three? And where was their father? My brain comes up with strange things sometimes (and I know that leaves me wide open, go ahead).

I wish IIS would just play nice instead of hogging all the toys. No wonder I couldn't get Apache to install with IIS, IIS grabs all the open ports when it starts up, leaving none for Apache. So dumb. So greedy. Of course this fact is very well hidden and must be turned off in a very convoluted way. Ah well, at least they both run together now...finally.

On the way to work this morning I was listening to my Great Big Sea CD. Some great tunes, which I know DC doesn't like :) But I thought that Ordinary Day was especially appropriate for a discussion yesterday about life and what to do in life, etc. In particular the chorus.

I've got a smile on my face, I've got four walls around me
The sun in the sky, the water surrounds me
I'll win now but sometimes I'll lose
I've been battered, but I'll never bruise... it's not so bad

Chorus
And I say way-hey-hey, it's just an ordinary day
and it's all your state of mind
At the end of the day,
you've still got to say... it's all right.

See that girl on the street, what keeps her from dying
Let them say what they want, she won't stop trying
She might stumble, if they push her 'round
She might fall, but she'll never lie down...

Chorus

It's a beautiful day, but there's always some sorrow
It's a double edged knife, but there's always tomorrow
It's up to you now if you sink or swim,
Keep the faith and you're ship will come in.