My friend Jen won the pay it forward Target gift card. She bought some toys to donate to Toys for Tots and she also bought canned goods to donate to a church food pantry near her home. The food pantry helped folks in her neighbourhood last year when it was hit by a tornado. I love how she turned the good deed back around from an event that was literally in her backyard. What comes around goes around!

Way to pay it forward, Skip! (Jen is on the right)

Bob and I didn’t want to do a big gift exchange for the holidays since we just had a lovely weekend in Steamboat Springs for our anniversary. We set a limit of $20 so we’d have to be creative. I was so proud of what I came up with for him. Have you seen the Obol? It is the never-soggy cereal bowl. Bob never puts milk on cereal because of the sogginess so I was pretty impressed with myself for finding it.

Wondering what Bob got me?

My charmer. Now is a good time to tell ya’ll he’s sat on me and farted on purpose. Remind me again why I married him. Oh yeah…

Once you get past the fart part, you’ll see the main reason for giving me a fistful of cash. He gave me 2 days to spend the money on other people and Bob said he’d help me out. Melt my heart. I love giving stuff to folks in need and he was going to help me!

The next morning I bought a Starbucks coffee and I gave it to an older woman panhandling in the freezing cold. I offered her sugar packets to put in her coffee and she said “no thanks, I’m sweet enough!”.

For my next good deed, I contacted Growing Home to see what items they desperately needed for their food pantry. I was told the families have been asking for baking supplies to make Christmas cookies. I totally support children baking cookies for Santa, so I headed to the grocery store. Bob helped me drop off the goods.

I still had some money left over so we went to a local diner for the early bird specials. We do this a few times a year and I like to pick out an elderly couple or person dining by him/herself and anonymously purchase their meal. An older fella was sitting in the booth next to ours, all by himself and reading a newspaper so we decided to buy his meal. We sneak out before the folks know their meal has been paid for.

By not giving me a tangible gift, Hubster thought of the perfect gift for me. Random acts of kindness are the best and I was happy to share some of those random acts with Bob. Now that cereal bowl I got him sounds pretty lame, no?

I’m taking a little blogging break while we’re in NY for the holidays. Hope ya’ll have a great holiday and travel safely wherever you may be going. I’ll leave you with 2010 pet photos.

Four years ago today, at 4:00pm, Bobby asked me to marry him in front of thousands of people at Rockefeller ice rink. I said “I suppose as long as the rock is big enough. Whatcha got in that pocket?”.

“What do you mean you don’t know how to open the box?”

“Oh good. It is the ring I wanted! Yes, I’ll marry you!” I’m pretty sure I didn’t really say much of anything- only nodded and cried.

Exactly one year later at 4:00 pm, I married my snookums! At least I think I did. I was trying not to go into ugly cry when I was reciting my vows so I just mouthed the words but no sound actually came out of my mouth. Does that still count as a legal marriage if I didn’t actually say “I do”?

My grandparents have been married for 65 years now. Slowly but surely, we will get there too. I can’t wait to be a ball and chain for that long!

Both of our parents have been married for 30+ years as well. If I learned anything from my parents it is to always have fun. Go fishing together. Admit to leaving dishes in the sink even if you didn’t. Play euchre.

Happy anniversary to us!

Paco has been in and out of the vet’s office getting blood drawn and having two separate urine analysis tests done to find out why he’s lost so much weight. Just a week ago he was down to 9 pounds. He’s been so cold at night that he wedged himself between my legs as I had them resting on the coffee table.

After 3 trips to the vet and a couple hundred dollars worth of tests, the results were in:

He just decided he didn’t like his dry food anymore so he didn’t eat as much, which caused the weight loss.

When I heard the vet say that there wasn’t anything medically wrong, I was elated for a moment that Paco wouldn’t need surgery and that he didn’t have kidney problems. Then I was annoyed that he didn’t have anything wrong with him because we went through a week of worrying and testing just to find out he suddenly decided to protest his food. Bob had the same reaction that I did:

We’ve been giving Paco at least 2 cans of wet food and mixing some dry food into it each day and he’s a chow hound. Back up to 11 pounds already! He’s been very obnoxious now (I think it is retaliation of all of the vet visits and baths he’s had all week). I’m ready to pack him in a box and ship him back to his birth mother.

I’m actually going to miss that goober when I’m in NY for 6 days for the holidays.