Our Home

This was a nice light snow we got the end of Nov... November 24th I believe. This is what our house looks like now. Today I climbed on the piles at the end of the driveway and cut them down probably a foot or so. It got to the point that I couldn't lift the snow high enough to shovel!

Please STOP SNOWING!

December had been pretty busy for us. It started with watching my 8 year old nephew's basketball game! YEA!!!! I love basketball so watching my niece and nephew play is a FAVORITE past time. This was his second game and they won... by quite a bit. (This might have actually been the end of November, I can't remember to be honest...either way it was fun!)

Here he is (holding the water bottle) on the bench. And here he is as point guard. For a little guy he can handle the ball really well... we are still working on that left hand though. Being left handed, it's a passion of mine to make sure kids learn early how to use BOTH hands equally.

He scored I think 6 or 8 points in this game!

Here is his sister and brother watching the action.

Ha ha... love this picture. He was enjoying the game, I'm sure. Mr Wonderful is also a big fan. He coached 8th grade girls for a year at a Christian school down by Milwaukee.

Here is my little sister and her fiance Joey watching the action.

And my dad stretching after it was all over.

As part of his Christmas gift... we took Ry-Guy to watch the men's basketball game at the UW Madison. The Badgers beat UW Green Bay in a non-conference interstate match up.

They have nicknames for each other... growing up I had a dog named Scott so his name is Dawg and he calls Ry-guy All Star. They enjoy each other... I love that they get along.

We put up our own Christmas tree early December. It's little and perfect for us!

We decided to start our own tradition and ever year we are going to buy each other an ornament for the tree. Here is the one Scott got me. I love snowmen and we had put up Christmas lights together, I love hats and scarfs, and it has little houses on it... as we are starting our first home together so this was the perfect first ornament.

And this one says "Our First Christmas Together" so I got this one for Scott. Again with the snowmen... they are just so cute I couldn't help myself.

And here is Percy... our perfect little Christmas gift. Ok to be honest, I'm not a huge cat person but she's a very cuddly cat and she seems to love me so I've learned to love her as well. I still don't love the cat hair EVERYWHERE but she's worth it.

We've had A LOT of snow lately. It doesn't seem to stop. I think we're at a record setting December. Eek. Last Friday Scott couldn't get out of the driveway to go to work so we had our first real snow day together. We shoveled until we could hardly stand. Then we showered and got into pj's for a fun filled day of wii playing. Here's Mr Wonderful ready for action.

Even Percy got into the game. We created a mii for her so that she can show up in the games with us. She just discovered she can walk across the entertainment center. She was chasing around the pointer. It was pretty funny. She thought it was a toy for her I think.

She likes to pose for her pictures.

This is what our backyard looked like about 12 inches of snow ago... I don't know where else we can put the snow!
And here is our driveway. If there is someone in the passenger side of a vehicle they have to get let out at the sidewalk because we can't knock down the snow banks any further without putting it all in our neighbors yard. Yuck! I can no longer see out the end of our driveway, it's about 6 feet high!

I'm really behind on the "What's Happening" posts so I thought I'd do a quick catch up.

THANKSGIVING!!! I love it. One of the best times of the year. It doesn't stress people out like Christmas, it's not super commerical-ised (Is that a word) like Valentine's Day or St Patty's Day... it's just fun, family and food.

This year was my cousin's baby's first Christmas... She loved it I'm sure! I LOVE my grandma's food. This year all I ate was corn and mashed potatoes... I just ate A LOT of both.

I went to Thanksgiving lunch at my dad's family and then we did Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family. (I ate turkey and other traditional food there but only because no one makes mashed potatoes like grandma... and the corn at grandma's is always frozen sweet corn with LOTS of butter and salt and pepper and oh my it's to die for.)

Anyway... after two BIG meals I went to a friend's house where we planned out our attack. See we started a tradition of Black Friday shopping. This year I didn't need anything. There was one thing Scott wanted me to pick up if we were able to but not the end of the world if I didn't get it. That's it. So the mall in the Dells opened at Midnight and then the stores in Madison started opening at 4 am. We got into attack mode. The guys entertained the kids... here is Jimmy playing Wii Mario Kart with Peirce... good work Jimmy.

We went through all the ads and made lists of who wanted what at each store. Then we figured out what times stores opened so we could hit them all as they were opening, avoid lines, and still get in and out.

And I think we succeeded. This was the back of the Tahoe... no third row seats either... this is straight packages. All by our feet and between the middle seat looked like this too. I think we had two or three more stops after this actually. This was just after our stop at Home Depot at 6am.


That night we had Bradley Family Fun Night. I didn't get my camera out but it was a blast!!! We played Skip-O and Apples to Apples. It was the first time Mr Wonderful met my entire family in one place at the same time. Two bro-in laws (Close enough Joey), two sistas, two nephews, a niece, mom, dad, me and Scott. It was a GOOD time! Lots of laughing and FUR is the Go To card in Apples to Apples... hahahahaha

My family is loud and we have fun and we laugh a lot more then the average family. We aren't sensor ed very well and we like to have a few beers and cocktails while we play games. Needless to say Scott was REALLY quiet compared to us.

Then Saturday night I went to Scott's parents house for dinner. His sister from MN was home with her fiance, his sister that isn't in my fan club and her family were there, his parents and us. It was so quiet. It was nice and I had a really good time, don't get me wrong, but it was almost culture shock in comparison to my family gatherings. His mom is so sweet and I love his dad, he's SO smart. His family is great... I love them all very much... even if that feeling isn't given to me in return. They are just very different from my family.

So that was Thanksgiving weekend. It was great to be home and I loved seeing everyone but it was also nice to be back in the land of just the three of us... oh and the cat went home with us and I think she liked to play with her cousin Mavrick. (The cat.) She's going home again for Christmas and has already started napping in her pet taxi... I think she's looking forward to it.

ok so I'm old enough to know that friends come and go. i'm old enough to not get jealous when i'm not included in things. i'm also old enough to know better when i'm losing a battle. since the beginning of time i've always said that i don't need a lot of friends, i just want good friends. i thought i had a good group of friends around that would always be there for me. then i got divorced and i've never felt so alone. sure there were people there for me. ok like two but still, that's better then nothing. then old friends apologized for leaving and came back and i thought it was all good. there are about 3 friends from my hometown that i don't want to lose. one i'm confident i never will, but she isn't the kind of friend to make plans. she's not going to call me out of the blue to do something, but she'll never turn me away if i need her. another is the same way, will never make the first move, but shows such enthusiasm when i do. then there is a friend that i always though would call. the one that pulled us all together. the one that made the plans and made us get together. i found out recently she made plans and pulled everyone together, except me. it's stupid and i shouldn't care but i really do. i really got jealous to find out she included everyone but me. i live 2 hours away, it's fine. i shouldn't be included. should i? i'm unemployed. i can drive home at the drop of a hat. why wouldn't i be included? i don't know. it's stupid and i'm being juvenile. ugh. grow up jessica. grow up.