12 days of christmas "countdown"
11 minutes until I take a coffee break
10 days of vacation
9 days until New Years Eve
8 days until the Music City Bowl in Nashville, go Heels!!
7 airplanes to fly over break
6 o'clock a.m. flight to Texas tomorrow morning
5 + hours will be spent watching the Badgers in the Rose Bowl!
4 grad school classes PASSED [2 with honors :) ]
3 airports to pay a luggage fee
2 days until Christmas eve
1 WONDERFUL WINTER OF 2010

Final exams are over! I survived my first semester of PhD school. I am DONE until January (except for my full time job).....

Yes, it's a real tree

Jancie and I put our Christmas tree up a couple weeks ago. Though, it didn't look quite right until there were presents underneath.

We decorated all by ourselves, there were only a few light strand and outlet mishaps (nothing burned down) and it was a "learning experience" for me since I've never set up a Christmas tree before.
We had LOTS of roses left over from Liz's wedding!

Dexter: Season Gingerbread

Last week Liz, Jancie, Emily and I got together to eat chicken and dumplings and make gingerbread houses. It was Liz's last weekend as a single girl, her wedding is this Saturday!
We set up our supplies (candy) and got to work.
My gingerbread creation was the "chalet", which looked more like a little tent-shack, so after I was satisfied with it's candycane theme I decided to spice it up a little.
Lately I've been obsessed with watching Dexter. Finals are coming up so it's the perfect way to distract myself and put off studying. For those of you who don't know, Dexter is a tv show on Showtime. The main character, Dexter, is a very likable serial killer who also works in forensics at the Miami Metro Police station as a blood spatter analyst. The twist is he only kills murderers who don't get caught by the police.

I created a crime scene in the little Gingerbread community. As you can see, the marshmallow snowman at the chalet has been shot! Check out the wound to the stomach and the red sprinkle blood spatter on his right side! It's time to call in Dexter!

Dexter checks out the chalet but can't find any evidence of who shot the snowman. The snow marshmallows on the hershey bar road might be covering up evidence.
Ah ha! The murder weapon was stashed between the two red frosting and sprinkles walkways! Someone hid it behind the sugarplum pine tree.
Dexter does his thing (watch the show for more details), finds the murderer, and makes sure that the gingerbread town is never again terrorized by the Tiny Marshmallow Snowman Killer (as nicknamed by the Gingerbread Times).
The end.

Little Scoundrel

Little Blade's favorite perch, it makes him almost as tall as the other dogs:
Blade likes to pull on Ben's sweatshirt sleeve
He also likes to hang out under the coffee table and "play"

Baby Blade at the dog park! This is an easy way to make him very sleepy.
Little bug wants to cross the fence and play in the big dog area, but he is too little
Uh oh, he spotted me
He was a crowd favorite and made friends with pups his own size
Very sleepy on the car ride home: