Cyber Monday

 

As you all know, I sell Dove Chocolate as a side hobby. For something fun this year, I am going to have a Cyber Monday sale. FREE Shipping on all orders placed on 11/28/11.

Visit www.aloveofchocolate.com for an online catalog under Irresistible Products.

To order or if you have any questions, email me at suzanne@aloveofchocolate.com
This is something that is fun for me so order something fun for you!

Thanksgiving

We kicked off Thanksgiving week with grandparents lunch at school.  Gary and Sherrie visited Katherine's school and had lunch with her class.  While waiting for our Thanksgiving feast (it was about 45 minutes late), Brett read the kids a story.  It was quite cute but I guess that he was nervous as his palms were sweating.
Our food finally arrived and it was soo good!  I could enjoy it for about two minutes and then it was back to work. 

Once I finished work on Tuesday afternoon... it was party time!!  Woo Hoo!  No school for 5 days!!

Wednesday was the day of swimming.  Katherine swam at the Camelback Inn for about 3 hours and then went to swim class.  She has a new instructor and with it being the day before Thanksgiving, she was the only one in class.  A private class for group price.  I'll take it!
Katherine was pretty much done and ready to fall asleep after her lesson.  We had dinner and then it was time for bed.

Thursday ~ Turkey Day!  Although in our house we have Roast Beef on Thanksgiving.  I am not really a turkey fan and one day I looked up the recipe for Lawry's Prime Rib and haven't looked back since.  It feeds the same amount of people and by the time that you add in all of the fixin's for turkey dinner, it's about the same price.

Our roast beef cooked fast and we had dinner about an hour and a half early.  Hey, it's Thanksgiving... anything can happen.  We had Brett's parents, Lillian (a Tossell family friend), Brett's uncle Bill and his girl friend along with her three kids.  It was a full house considering about two weeks before Thanksgiving I thought that it was only going to be Brett, Katherine and I.
At about 6pm, we had more people come over to our house.  All of the neighbor kids and their parents.  It was tons of fun.  We had the XBox going, the fire going, laughter through out the house and sharing stories. 

Friday was SPA DAY!  It was a nice and relaxing day for me.  I hung out by the spa pool and drank a very refreshing Cucumber Mojito before my relaxing massage.  Ahhh!!

Saturday was just another relaxing day while we wrapped up Sunday with decorating for Christmas.  Wow!  Christmas!!  It's almost here!  Yea!  My favorite time of the year.  I love the decorations, music and lights.

So, another Thanksgiving has come and gone and now onto the next holiday.  Brett will be working on Christmas and I am going to be taking Katherine to see Shamu.  Gary and Sherrie will be spending their Christmas with David, Heidi, Dylan and Ryan in Texas.  Considering I was thinking that it was only going to be Brett, Katherine and I for Thanksgiving, it was really nice for Gary and Sherrie to come on over and share the holiday with us.

Now onto Christmas...

From Pink to Black

Little Katherine is very much a girly girl.  Barbies, My Little Ponies, Princesses... anything girly.  Her room is painted pink and her bathroom is decorated with butterflies.

She has found a new love... a love for killer whales and dolphins.  She wants EVERYTHING to be either black or blue.  No more pink.  She even asked for her room to be painted black.  Her room could be a closet (a nice size walk in closet) so painting it black would make it look so much smaller.

We watch two videos... Believe (Shamu Whale) and the Dolphin DVD, both from Sea World.  We watch the shows as well as all of the bonus features.  I think that I pretty much have both videos memorized.  I think that it awesome that Katherine has found a love for marine life.  It's just crazy how obsessed she has become.

Before this stage, I had to BEG her to wear long pants.  Now it's very simple.  She has blue jeans (like dolphins) and black jeans (like killer whales).  She wears black and white shirts and every now and then I can get her to wear a pink shirt.  Brett wants her to wear pink again.  He keeps telling her that pink looks much better than black.
 
I know that Brett is done with this "black phase" and I wasn't so excited to hear that she wanted her fingernails painted black.  Maybe we are dodging a bullet, though.  Maybe she is going through her "black stage" now and we won't have to go through it again during the teenage years.  Yep, I know that this is wishful thinking but for now it's kind of cute.

While explaining how dangerous it was working with killer whales, I showed her the trainer that was killed by the killer whale.  I didn't show her the video of it (duh).  I pointed her out in the behind the scenes chapter in the Believe video.  I was trying to make a point and I am not sure if Katherine understood my point or not but we did go have three inches cut off of her hair.

For Halloween, Katherine was a Orca Trainer.  Yes, she understands what a Orca is.  She spouts out random facts about killer whales.  Finding a costume for Halloween, it wasn't the easiest but we made her a very fun and comfortable costume.  She received a lot of nice compliments about how unique she was.  

I do miss the pink but I think that it is great that she has found such a love for marine life.  She loves it all ~ fish, seals, sea lions, sharks, pilot whales, dolphins and above all killer whales.

Anniversary

Our anniversary was last week.  It's hard to believe that six years has gone by.  I actually thought that it was seven... time flies when you are having fun.

Anyway... we saved up and just as we did last year... celebrated our anniversary a week later.  Katherine went to Splash n' Dash (her favorite) and we went to dinner.  We made reservations at a restaurant that we look forward to each year as we savor over their popovers.  The restaurant is at the resort where we had our rehearsal dinner.

We dropped Katherine off and she never even looked back.  She loves going to Splash n' Dash as her favorite swim coach of all time is there... Coach Aaron.  This time, she did ask if he would be her boyfriend.  It was quite cute.  :)

We got to the restaurant about a half an hour early and so we sat at the bar and had a drink.  All I could think about was the popovers.  Yum!!  It was finally time and we were seated.  The restaurant was a bit cold as they had the doors open.  It was cold for me as anything below 90* in my opinion is cold.

The waiter closed the doors and the food began to arrive.  First the chicken pate... not a favorite of mine but Brett really liked it.  Then it was time for the popovers.  OMG!!  They still rock!!

Our food came next and well, it wasn't as good as before.  The steak didn't sizzle and the veggies were underdone.  It was a bit of a disappointment.  We agreed that the food that we had the night before was much better and 1/5 of the price.  It was a let down.

Our dinner was such a let down, that we didn't even stay for dessert.  We had about an hour and a half to kill before it was time to pick up Katherine.  So, where did we end up?  At Michaels!  I love that store.  We walked around and just looked at everything.  They were even playing Christmas music.  I love Christmas music but I still think that it's a bit early to start playing it.

We hopped in the car and went over to get Katherine.  It was a little early but I knew that she was tired.  She was really happy to see us and didn't fight to go home.  It was the right choice.

At the end of the night... the dinner was a bit of a disappointment but the company made up for it.  Six years have come and gone and it's crazy to think the next six will come even faster.  I do think for our next anniversary, we will be going to a little place where you enter through the kitchen and eat in a little red booth.