It's been forever...

We are getting a puppy! My work friend's cousin has a chocolate lab that will be having puppies in the next few weeks. When they are ready to leave their mom in early spring, we are getting one, and we're so excited about it! We don't have our backyard fenced yet, but we will by then (although, as my mother points out, labs chew on everything, so maybe we shouldn't get a fence at all and it would chew the neighbor's trouble-maker kid!) Even though two chocolate lab parents can have yellow lab puppies, I'm hoping we get a chocolate lab because I think they're the cutest ones. I think Z would rather have yellow though. We could get one of each and they'd look like my birthday cake when they snuggled! (Yellow cake, chocolate icing – get it? Forgive me, I'm going puppy crazy.)

Christmas will be here before you know it, and we haven't started decorating the house at all yet. This is not necessarily my preference, but since we always get a live tree, I do still want the tree to be full and beautiful when Christmas morning gets here, not naked. I've gotten a good start on my Christmas shopping, but I'm nowhere near done yet. Cooking is one thing I've tackled head on though – it seems like every other day I'm making some new Christmas goodie. (Well, it seems that way ever since Thanksgiving, actually.) Chex mix, sausage balls, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter pie, chocolate trifle, it's been practically non-stop. I love it though. Last night I tried my work friend's recipe for poppy seed chicken casserole, and it was delicious, in my humble opinion. (Same friend with the puppy connection. I'm actually making friends…)

At work, Christmas is definitely in the air. We've had our official "decorate the office" day, and we've just begun our "Twelve Days of Eating." Apparently they do Christmas big here. I see it as overkill, because I don't necessarily like celebrating the holiest season of the year at work. If you truly want your employees to celebrate, don't make them work Christmas Eve! (Boy do I envy school teachers during the holidays. Seriously, if I had kids I would be so mad about working on Christmas Eve.)

Tomorrow we are having a security system installed at the lake house. It'll help our insurance costs, help me feel better when we're gone all day, and help me sleep better on nights when Z is out of town (which is pretty often now. He travels all over the state for court.) Also, with the promotion they were running, we got lots of incentives, and that helps too. And once that's up, we can finally get our tree! We didn't want to have any gifts under the Christmas tree without having our security system installed.