It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I Love Christmas!! Love decorating the house. Love having Christmas Lights up. Love that it was cold & felt like Christmas in Dallas! Mainly I loved that I took off 2 weeks of work.

We celebrated w/ Sean's family the weekend before since they would be in Arizona for Christmas. It's so fun to see the kids open gifts. Isn't Christmas really for kids anymore?

LOVE that my Aunt Joyce & cousin Christine came for the whole week of Christmas to visit. Miss having Christine around (one of my many old roommies). We had fun playing CatchPhrase, cards, decorating letters for our homes, shopping, Furmaniting my dogs, getting mani's & pedi's, eating & more eating....

Kristen & Kelly were in town as well with their 3 dogs, so at one point there were 7 dogs in my house. Yes, you read it right. 1 dog for each person in the house (man on dog defense). Below you can see I'm starting to lose it with Dallas.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner...

I hosted a girls night this last Saturday. We were all going to hang out, eat of course & then watch a movie. Jenny picked Dirty Dancing. There were many laughs as always. Jenny made sure we all knew that she could do the last dance scene. Yes, she still has it! Quite the dance moves Jenny (takes me back to your dance competitions in high school --GO ROXY!!!). I secretly just want to have a guy walk up & say "nobody puts Heather in the corner" but, really when am I ever in a corner. I can assure you I wouldn't be leaping off stages & jumping into the swan lift at the end --not even when I was 100lbs lighter. Last movie night we watched Some Kind of Wonderful. Next time, it's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. 

Probably my favorite part is how the girls come over, get settled on the couch & go for my smut magazines. I consider them "the real news". You may be familiar with them...Us Weekly & People. 

  

Nikki & Amy B, we missed you! (Nikki, I have a bone to  pick w/ you. You can't miss the next one.)

Season of Giving

I'll tell you with everything going on with the economy right now, I feel very blessed for all I have. It's made me be a little more grateful then I usually am.

This year I've tried to get back into more volunteer work and give back in the community.

I joined the Red Cross' Disaster Action Team (DAT) where we help in Collin County those that have been victims to fires, floods, tornado's, etc... I had the opportunity to work the shelters when Hurricane Ike hit Texas. Lots of displaced families up in the Dallas area from Houston. I sign up a week out of each month to be on call w/ the DAT team. It's from 6pm to 7:30am & when you get a call, you go out w/ 1 -2 others from DAT to respond to fires mainly. Sometimes its a quiet week, others you'll be called out a few times. We had 2 fires last week to work, one w/ an apt & the other was a single family fire. It's neat to be able to provide them assistance & be there for them when they've lost everything. Everyone be careful w/ the Christmas lights. They cause a lot of problems this time of year!

My favorite event I've worked this year though had to be this last Friday when we went to the Bonham Veteran's Hospital for their Christmas program. My friend Susan & her family are part of one of the local chapters & had asked if our Ward would be able to make 50 dozen cookies to help their chapter be able to give homemade cookies to the 350 vets. My ward was amazing because they had committed to all 50 dozen & actually made quite a few more. Each Veteran gets a bag & goes around to all these tables which has different chapters or associations there to give them goodies or items they need. A bunch of us go through with bags for those in the nursing home that can't come over & then they let the rest of the vets in. I have never been so touched by how humble & grateful these men & women were for socks, pencil & notebook, fruit cups, cookies, oranges, $1 coupon booklets, etc... They were thanking us & saying God Bless You to us! We thanked them for all their service & what they've done for our country. They're so appreciative for that! I know when I worked my first event which was a Carnival for Vet Hospital, I was shocked at how many young men were there. Quite a few of them are back from Iraq & they have not necessarily health issues but mental issues from what they've gone through. It breaks your heart. I will never forget that day & can't wait to do it again next year.

Susan is seriously one of the most generous & unselfish people I've ever met. She has been such a good example to me to get involved more in the community. Thanks Susan for your great friendship!!