An Idea I had today....

I don't know why I was thinking about this some more today...while I was driving. But anyway. Today in the car on my way to make some crafts I came up with what might be considered a brilliant idea.

Yeah, this is still about the Combo-gifting thing. Sorry if you were hoping for another brilliant idea.

I've decided that if my Mom ever sends me another combo-gift that I'm just going to wait until my birthday to open it.

I was figuring that since I'll be getting Christmas gifts from DH, DD, MIL, Bro & SIL, and friends... that one less gift won't hurt me any. So I'll just put Mom's gift off to the side and wait for my birthday to open it.

Then I hope that she asks how I liked it when I talk to her. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! "Gee Mom, I'm sorry. It's not my birthday yet, so I didn't open it."

Now watch. I've got the perfect plan and she'll send me separate gifts this year.

deep thinking...

I've been sitting here playing a game of Bejeweled and thinking about things. Wondering about why things are. Mostly about why some things bother me so very much. And of course it all boils down to my parents. Everything is about them right?

Here's the deal...

My birthday is coming up. It's 10 days after Christmas. My mother likes to buy me a large gift for Christmas and say it's for my birthday too. She doesn't seem to mind much if I do a similar thing to her... her birthday is Dec 1st. And I'm pretty sure that it didn't bother me so much at one point. But now it really iritates me.

No one would ever think to do that to a person with a birthday in say... July. Right? Is there anyone out there with a birthday in July who has gotten a Christmas/birthday gift???

So I've been pondering why this bugs me so much. I'm sure that folks who have birthdays closer to Christmas get this all the time and have learned to live with it or perhaps even enjoy it.

And I think I've got it figured out. It's two fold.

The first part is that my father never remembered my birthday. He doesn't remember anyone's birthday unless it's his own. He barely remembered Christmas...in fact I know that one year he had me go with him to do the Christmas shopping for my brothers and myself. That is the WORST thing a parent can ever do to a kid. I went to the store, picked out everything for my brothers...got my own gift, wrapped them all on Christmas Eve and put them under the tree. The following morning there was just what I put under the tree...nothing more. Not even a card.

Of course this man had done plenty of "Worst Parent on Earth" worthy deeds. But that's another blog.

The second part is when I first moved out on my own, I lived with a boyfriend. And he could never wait for Christmas. The first Christmas that we were together, he had given me my Christmas gift probably the day he bought it or the following day and gave it to me. Told me to open it right then. Thinking that I might be getting more gifts on Christmas, I opened it. It was a cute stuffed animal...and it was all I got that year. My friends were as confused as I was. They thought he was being cute and doing a 12 days of Christmas thing...where I would get something each day until Christmas... NOPE. He did that every year that we were together...and worse when my Mom sent me my Christmas/birthday gift...he forced me to open that too. (when I say forced, I mean he bugged me endlessly about it until I opened the gift.) So on Christmas day there was nothing for me to open. And of course for my birthday there was nothing to open either.

So now that it has been over 20 years since that happened, one would think that I would have gotten over it. I wish I had thought to bring this up when I was seeing the counselor. I would sure like to be over it.

Luckily, I have a wonderful DH who while he teases me about doing the Christmas/birthday gift thing would never seriously ever do it. He knows how much my Mom doing it buggs me, so he doesn't. Besides, he's smart enough to know that everything goes on sale after Christmas and he can get me a much bigger gift for my birthday...which makes me happier.

Okay, after hearing from Carmen, I've decided that perhaps my perturbance at this issue might not be out of line. So to test my theory, I'm asking for folks to tell me what month their birthday is in and if they have ever received the combo Christmas/Birthday gift.

January - Me gets combos, Carmen gets combos, Better Safe than Sorry no combos!
February - goofy girl sometimes gets combos, Bone got degifted!
March - Jake & Bathsheba's mom no combos
April - Cheysuli doesn't normally get presents at all,
May -
June -
July - Chickadee (Colleen), Barbara no combos either!, Samantha no combos
August -
September -
October - the big man, Mar, Dawn
November - Denise gets combos, Veronika no combos!
December - Holly gets combos, Rascal's big brother no combos ('cuz mom wouldn't allow it. YAY MOM!), Samantha's twins used to combo but not any more.

Thanks for helping me conduct this poll.

I've learned the term for this is "Double-gifting" although that sounds a little like I should be getting twice the gifts. Perhaps "Combo-gifting" fits better. And poor Dawn's parents who get combo-gifted for Mother & Father's days.

I wanna thank all y'all who don't get combo-gifted who support us who do get this.

And Colleen asked "does she (my mom) know how I feel?" Yes, I've told her. But she feels that since it's her money and she doesn't have much that I should be looking a gift horse in the mouth. To tell you the truth, I would prefer if she gave me the combo-gift on my birthday instead.

So I'm seeing her that those of us who get combo-gifted, don't like it and those of us who don't get combo-gifted completely understand our feelings. So YAY! That's a good thing.

Jake & Bathsheba think my Mom has a control thing about my birthday and I think they're right. She's got some severe control issues (that's another post!), and for much of our lives we were very poor. She's always been proud of how she was able to keep us all well fed and clothed on such a tight budget. However, part of that was taking advantage of the fact that two of us had our birthdays near Christmas and two had birthdays in the summer...so she did not throw us birthday parties at all.

Well I Never! - a meme

This one is our charming Lady of the Hill's meme, and I picked it up over at Maremagnum's place listing things I have never done.

01. I have never had older siblings. I am the oldest.
02. I have never been Greenland
03. I have never had a son. Only a daughter, but I've changed plenty of boy diapers.
04. I have never been to Europe
05. I have never been to Africa
06. I have never been to Moscow
07. I have never been to a bed & breakfast
08. I have never driven a school bus
09. I have never seen a real panda bear in person
10. I have never buried treasure in St. Louis or St. Paul
11. I have never tried to learn Japanese or Chinese (although I've been to Japan)
12. I have never cooked a lobster
13. I have never played real golf (put-put lots of times though)
14. I have never ran a marathon (I don't run!)
15. I have never wanted to be in the medical profession (although one of the paramedics asked if I was a paramedic.)
16. I have never written a novel, or short story either.
17. I have never hoist the mainstay
18. I have never gone sailing (although I've always wanted to!)
19. I have never swab the poop deck
20. I have never veer to starboard 'cuz I never sail at all
21. I have never had a pedicure
22. I have never never owned a parrot (or held one either!)
23. I have never played bridge
24. I have never gotten head lice
25. I have never designed a blog template
26. I have never watched LOST
27. I have never plucked a rooster
28. I have never accidentally deleted important files (*knocks on wood)
29. I have never kissed a chipmunk
Last, but not least:
30. "I have never been to Boston in the Fall!"

In case you didn't catch it, many of my Nevers are also the lyrics to one of my favorite songs.

Tagging you and you, specially you if you belong to the ones who have never done a meme !

The countdown....

Rolls - baked
brownie pie - baked (MIL is bringing the pumpkin dessert)
Rutabegas - chopped & soaking in water
Turkey - in brine...getting yummy


Tomorrow's agenda:

10:00am - preheat oven. pull bird out of brine and get it into the roasting pan.
10:00am - start cooking turkey
11:00am - start potatoes

While potatoes cook, get yams, green bean casserole & stuffing ready to be baked later. Put in frig.

Finish potatoes and any other side dishes.

12ish - eat a snack...wash dishes...get table set...holler at DH & DD to make sure the house is finished getting cleaned.

1pm - put yams in oven to bake & put "brick" in oven too (it's a thick tile that keeps the rolls warm on the table.

1:30 - bird should be done, set aside to rest. Load oven with potatoes, green beans, stuffing to reheat and begin making the gravy.

1:45 - Carve the bird, heat the rolls, pop the corn in the microwave, heat the rutabegas (that I should have cooked earlier!) and pull the cranberries out of the frig.
2:00 - serve dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you're as busy & blessed as I am.

Update: well my bird was done a whole hour sooner than I had planned, but I just popped all my sides into the oven to reheat early and we ate early. When MIL showed up I wasn't dressed yet (I was holding off getting all pretty until all the ugly cooking work was done!) so I asked her to cut the tomatoe for the salad and zipped upstairs to get dressed.
Dinner came out wonderful. MIL raved about how good it all tasted. It's no secret...here's my Turkey recipe!

Two very cool nights...

Wednesday night Darly & I went to a Paramedic training class. See this friend of ours' SIL trains paramedics and they have a class each session where they need child patients/victims to work on as kids are different than adults.

So after braving the nighttime rushhour traffic and finding our way into the building (totally walked right past the door that was clearly labeled and open!) we get in and of course Darly is nervous.

Darly watches the other kids (my friend's kids who do this every time and are very used to it) and eventually warms up.

One of the Paramedic trainees comes up and tries to engage Darly who was still pretty nervous...but eventually she got Darly to participate.

They took Darly's history and vitals and then strapped her to a back board that I called a Magic Carpet...Darly said it wasn't much like a magic carpet...even though she was "floating"...oh well, so much for Mom trying to help. They then place the backboard onto the pram (stretcher?) and rode her around to a "ambulance" (room that has been built to look like an ambulance with a higher floor...although the great big window looking out at the parking lot isn't all that real...hee hee

Later Darly had her arm imobilized which was cool.

By the time Darly really got into things our time was up...but that's normally how things are with Darly. Oh well, hopefully next time we get to go she'll be more comfortable.

At the end the instructior (friend's SIL) asked the group to tell her about the kids one at a time and chewed them out for "taking the word of a 7y/o" for the history. She reminded the students that they had the perfect source of information for the kids...they're parents! But it seemed that the paramedics in training only used the parents if the children were too young.

My friend told me that some of the students were there for their second time and assured me that even though these students were almost done that they would have to do in the field training with experienced Paramedics. One guy has failed numerous times and SIL wants to not let him try again as he freaks her out.

I got to ask the difference between a Paramedic & EMT...EMT's have more training and when you call 911, chances are that you'll get a Fire Dept's Paramedic...who has been trained by a EMT in our area.

And our Second cool night was last night at the Observatory. We got to see how the Cassini-Huygens mission is going. Which kinda bored the kids a lot...but I found it very interesting and Darly was able to answer a very good question...What are those dark stripes on Saturn? Well the description below the picture tells you...but the kids only got the picture. And Darly knew it was the rings' shaddow.

After the slide show we got to go upstairs to the telescope and because it was a clear night we were able to actually view a few things. At first they had the scope pointed at a Nebula. I really couldn't make it out, but then I saw a picture of what it was supposed to look like and realized that I had seen it...should have looked at the picture first.

At this point some people began to leave. But the one guy hollers at another "Hey, can we look at M-15?" and he says "sure!"

Then we were shown a formation called M-15. This I could see. Yay! This is one of the Messier Objects, so I was able to show the kids from the chart downstairs...which made it seem more cool.

After that the guy hollers, "Hey, how about we take a look at Uranus?" and the other guy says sure! and I tried to find a picture that looked like what we saw...but all images online are much better than what we saw. It was a little smaller than a pencil eraser with a green halo.

And then the guy hollers, "Let's try for Neptune!" And they did. They couldn't be 100% certain that we were actually looking at Neptune because they had to manuver the telescope by hand for it as it was sitting very low in the sky. But it was still cool anyway.

The last time I got to go and look through the scope we saw Jupiter & the moon. And then this summer we got to see Mars, Jupiter & Saturn.

The Astronomy guys were telling us that there is one night of the year where all nine planets are visible...but you have to wait up all night to see them as they are at different positions in the sky. I'm hoping that we can go see that.

They're coming...is anyone else panicked?

Thanksgiving is only 8 days away...and most of today is gone already!

Darly invited MIL over for Thanksgiving...so that means I've gotta clean the house. If I have time, I'll clean the office too. HA! Don't hold your breath. I also wanted to clean the blinds, but I don't see that happening either.

They're taking pictures at Church this weekend & next weekend for our directory...but we can also order prints. I'm going to order some as the procedes are going to our sister Church in Germany.

So that means I've gotta get my hair done...my roots are really really long. Not quite long enough to chop off the color and call it good yet though. So I got an appointment on Thursday.

I like to have all of my Christmas shopping DONE before Thanksgiving. But that AINT happening as I haven't even got the lists started yet. Darly has hers, but I've still gotta have the talk with DH about what she can actually have from the list. I don't even know what I want for Christmas. And of course DH doesn't know.

I also like to have my Christmas cards in the mail right after Thanksgiving. Don't see that going either... but I guess it's okay to slack off about that as we haven't moved in a long time and none of the folks on my list need our updated address. {see we used to move all the time, so I would send out our cards right after Thanksgiving so they would have our new address and could send us a card back. My cousin's wife used to pick on me in her card...to everyone!}

One thing that will happen is that I WILL get my Christmas decorations up the day after Thanksgiving. And the lights will go up outside on the first day with no snow and it's not freezing outside. I would LOVE it if it got to 80 degrees again, but I won't hold my breath. What will most likely happen is you'll see me up there with hat & gloves hoping I don't slip on the roof trying to get it all perfect. I just had an idea... I should make some sort of permanent marks as to where everything goes. Hummmm... DH thinks I'm obsessed...he's right. But I come by it honestly...you should see my Mom's house.

And then there's our usual busy schedule. Someone take me away!

My brush with fame...

In honor of 80's week over at IYROOBTY I'm posting my New Kids on the Block story.

The Place: Tampa Florida
The Time: January 1991 (disclaimer: Yeah, I realize that this didn't happen in the 80's. But the band is from the 80's and that's where the them comes in.)

The Event: Super Bowl XXV Halftime show.


The halftime show was titled "A Small World Salute to 25 Years of the Super Bowl". It was produced by Disney and featured over 2,000 children from different ethnic backgrounds and a performance by boy band New Kids on the Block, who were quite popular at the time.

You probably don't remember seeing this halftime show....

ABC did not broadcast the halftime show live. Instead, they televised a special ABC News report anchored by Peter Jennings on the progress of the war. That didn't have anything new to report about the war as the soldiers were mostly sitting around taking the day off to watch the game! The halftime show was later shown on tape delay after the game.

Okay, let me go back to the real beginning of the story...

Back in December my youngest brother comes home from high school and asks me if I can drive him to a meeting at the school about participating in the halftime show. Hoping that I might possibly get a chance to be in the show too, I agreed to take him. (I had been in the 1884 halftime show as a stage hand because I chickened out on the dancing!)

So we go to the meeting and find out what they want us to do and I asked if they were taking older volunteers...to which they said yes. YIPPEE!

So in January we begin our practices. I was to help push a really big blow up of Pluto out onto the field. (think those airblown Christmas & Halloween displays...only over 20 feet tall!) There were 5 other character balloons, so there were a lot of crews.
After we got the balloons on the field and turned on the fans, we were to go to the infield closest to us and pretend to cheer for the New Kids.

Durring every practice they played the pre-recorded tape of the entire show with the New Kids part in it. So it would announce "Ladies & Gentelmen, (insert all the sponsors here) proudly present THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK!" at which we would all yell BOO! as loudly as we could during the practice, because they were old hat by then.

For the practices Disney dancers played the parts of the New Kids because they of course were too busy to actually come to practice. And on the night of the dress rehersal only 3 of the 5 were present as the other two were drunk in their tour bus. I'll leave you to figure out which two were drunk. Oh and I forgot the car searches every time we went to the stadium...they were worried that we might try to be terrorists.

So the night of the Super Bowl. We're all excited...so much so that Alice in Wonderland gave me lip for not listening to the National Anthem. She says "Can't you hear that?" Me: "No what is it?" LOL! Then there was the fly over of jets and then we were ushered to our balloons to get ready.

Soon enough it was time to push our balloons out. We were the second balloon on the "right" to go out. I say the "right" because the poor folks on the other side of the stadium got to see practically nothing as the entire show was set up toward the press boxes...they got to see just the back of the stage and no shots of the New Kids!

We ran over to the infield and one of the guys on our crew lifted me so I could sit on the wall that keeps the people off the field. When the New Kids came out (all of them) we all cheered, even though we really wanted to boo.

And the show went off without a hitch...we were all perfect.

Then we pushed our balloons off the field and went to celebrate. It wasn't until we got back to the high school where we were parked that they announced to us that they hadn't even aired the show. We were so disappointed!

But a few weeks later we all got a "Thank You" letter from Disney along with two one day passes and a video of our performance. I still have the video if you would like to see it. You won't see me in it at all though.

As I've mentioned before I also was in the 1884 half time show and Disney also asked me to participate in "The Red, White and Blue Troop Celebration" that was a welcome home for the soliders returning home from the Gulf War. In that show I actually was "on stage" and you can see me in it. I don't know that it was ever taped though...but DH (who was then just DB) took lots of pictures of me...I'll have to post those some day.

The Bra...revisited

Of course you had to have known that this saga wasn't over yet...right? Who knew this would lead to so much blog fodder? hee hee

For those of you who missed the first part, click HERE.


And now for the rest of the story.

Well Darly decided to try wearing the bra again. This time it was to a birthday party. I guess it was a special occasion! The party was at a bounce house (you know, where they have a bunch of those blow up bouncy things?)
So we're there for maybe 10 minutes and Darly comes up to me to have me put her bra, that she removed in the bathroom, in my purse. The funny thing about that was that the gal who recommended the book to me was standing right there...had read my blog post about the bra...and almost busted a gut containing her giggles until Darly went off to play again.
We then got into talking about her DD and the page on "tampoons." Growing up is so much fun!

Last night after dinner DH asked if we could go to Kohls to see what was on sale. While DH was looking in the Men's dept, Darly & I went to the girl's department and picked up this. So today she put one of those on and as far as I know it's still on...I haven't checked to see, but she didn't ask me to put it in my purse either.

In honor of 80's week

Bone over at IYROOBTY is considering a 80's week...so I took the quiz.



Yeah, of course I cheated! But I wanted to be sure to get the spelling right because he knocks off for it!

My baby is growing up....

... but not too fast

Darly is eight & a half now. So I decided that since she wasn't asking much about getting older that I would get her a book about growing up. On a friend's recommendation, I got her "The Care and Keeping of You - The Body Book for Girls".
Darly started reading the book while we were still in the store and had it almost finished before we got home. Needless to say she was very interested and the book helped to start a lot of much needed conversation. Luckily she's very comfortable with asking me stuff now.

However, Darly decided the other day that she would now like to have a bra. She brought this up at dinner the other night and DH nearly choked. He said "No, you're too young and you don't need one yet." I just looked at her from across the table with a look that said & meant that we would go shopping soon.

So we went shopping on Friday and picked out a very nice set of bras for her. She thinks they're great. She also decided that today she would wear one for the very first time... to Church. I thought it would be fine.

And it was fine...

... Until we got out of Church and were heading for the parking lot. She announced that the bra was too itchy. So I told her that she could take it off in the car.

So I tried to talk her through the "secret" maneuver of removing a bra while keeping your shirt on. It probably would have helped if she wasn't wearing a shirt with very tight sleeves. She ended up having to slip her arms out of the sleeves to get the bra off...but she did and put it in her bag and spent the rest of the day braless.

So after we got home, I asked her when she next planned to wear her bra. She says the next time she is going to be with her friend or next weekend.

No, as far as we know, her friend doesn't wear a bra yet either. I should probably warn her mom. And I'll definately tell Darly to not bring it up with her friend. It's not like either of them need a bra yet.

Update: I emailed friend's mom this morning about the bra situation and she emailed me back that Darly had already told friend about the bra...
WHAT? When did she do that? It turns out that she told her on Friday at Girl Scouts. Luckily friend has an older sister and it was no big deal. So I just went upstairs and gave Darly the "You're in Big Trouble!" look while I told her what had happened. LOL!

The Great Cookie Exchange 2006

Heather at Everything Under the Moon had the wonderful idea of starting a cookie exchange! Here is my contribution.

These are a family tradition from my MIL...

Sugar Plum Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 slightly beaten eggs
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
1 cup sugar
1 cup pecans or walnuts chopped
1 1/4 cups chopped dates (8oz)
2 1/2 cups Rice Krispy cereal
1/3 cup water
1 cup all purpose flour
red colored sugar

heat butter in medium skillet over medium heat; when melted, add eggs and sugar. Mix thoroughly, blend in dates, then add water. Cook, stirring constantly til thick (7-10 min). Stir in flour, salt, vanilla, nuts and rice krispies. Mix thoroughly. Cool till lukewarm. Shape into balls or strawberry shapes and roll in sugar. Yields aprox 70.

My new favorite song

It gets stuck in my head! And I love it!

If you would like to read more, click on the ****

Lincoln Brewster - Everlasting God
From the album Let The Praises Ring - Best Of Lincoln Brewster

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
Wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
Wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
Our God You reign forever
Our Hope our strong Deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint You won't grow weary
You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
The everlasting God
The everlasting

Label: Integrity Music

I also love this one! Todd Agnew - Did You Know
Were Mary’s the first eyes you saw
Or did You remember choosing that shade of brown?
Were You surprised at the shepherd’s crazy story
Or did You know You wrote the song the angels sang?

What was this life like for You?

Did You know?
Did the cross cast its shadow o’er your cradle?
Did You know?
Did You shudder each time Your hammer struck a nail?
Did you know?
How much heaven and how much earth
Were in this baby at His birth?
Did you know? Or did you wonder?

Did you remember the brightness of Your glory Or did You just notice it was cold and dark here?
Did You know Your name or did you have to be told?

Were You just a baby or were You as old as time?

What was Your life like?

I you wanna hear these head over to KLOVE and type the title into the search box and click on the speaker icon.

I Voted!

I've been meaning to go vote early since the early voting polls opened. I knew that next Tuesday I was going to be wayyy too busy to get it done and we have a REALLY long ballot this time.

In fact last night I was flipping through the channels on the TV and came across our Government access channel. Where our County Voter Registrar lady thingy was on there Highly suggesting that everyone vote by absentee ballot because of how long the ballot is... but you have to have your request for the absentee ballot into her office by Oct 27... ummm last night was Nov 1st! I think that they were replaying a tape.

So we headed over to vote. The early voting was held at our local fire department. Apparently they were NOT expecting that many people to vote early because the building did not have enough parking...so you had to wait to get a parking space. I ended up parking along the curb. Then there was a line of folks waiting to get into the building. I was like #15 or so to get in and then they had another 10 folks waiting to vote inside.

Luckily I had read everything, made my selections and brought my sample ballot with me because it would have taken me forever to choose everything there at the poll. Also it was a big help to have my sample ballot to check my ballot at the end...I was reading the sample ballot and holding my place on the screen with my finger. Darly found that pretty funny...but I wanted to be sure. Then they print the ballot, you check it again and then you press cast ballot. I was finally done!

As we leave, the line is now outside of the building about 30 or so people...I have NO IDEA where they were parking! And as we went to the car some guy wanted my spot against the curb. Trying to get out of there was fun. I got to show off my teriffic driving skills for Darly...she wasn't impressed. *sigh*

We got home to miss DH's call that he's going to be late.

Smashing Pumpkins!

Yesterday's Jack-o-lanterns will be making their next appearance in a Thanksgiving dessert or in soup or muffins...I don't know yet.

Tonight I cut appart my jack-o-lanterns that I carved just yesterday (Darly carved them too!), used non-flamable lighting in and then covered with plastic wrap and placed in the frig until I was ready to cook them!

I finally found my favorite pumpkin carving knife...after messing up every other knife in the house to find one that will cut through these suckers! And I cut up the pumpkins so they fit into my pressure cookers...yup! I have two pressure cookers. One is 4 qt (my first one) and the other is a 6qt...it's the baby.

I loaded up the pressure cookers with freshly cut pumpkin, locked them and set them both to high and waited for the fireworks! Well there were no fireworks and even though Darly was positive that they were "gonna blow!" They didn't blow either.

After 5 pots worth I got all 3 of our pumpkins cooked.

Then comes the fun part... pealing the pumpkins. See they're much easier to peal when they're cooked. You just slide a spoon between the flesh & the skin. After that you take your trusty potato masher and take out your frustrations on them.

And last but not least you dump the cooked & smashed pumpkin into containers and put them in the freezer.

Now why on earth would I smash my own pumpkins? I'm not entirely sure about that. I find myself getting more and more domestic as I get older...why just a week ago I made my very first batch of bread...without a breadmaker! And part of it must be that I HATE to buy something that I can make myself. And another part is that I grew these pumpkins (well two of them) and I should get to eat them too. And finally it seems like such a shame for a pumpkin to only be a jack-o-lantern when there's so much other stuff it can be after halloween.

And the winner is....

Ladybug! woo hoo!

In this totally fair drawing, I put all the names on slips of paper and then had Darly pick one... she had no idea what she was picking. In fact she asked me "What will I have to do with this?" And I told her: "Nothing! You just picked who gets to read "Devil wears Prada" next." She's so thrilled!

So the book is off to Virginia...right? I need to go recheck Ladybug's blog. hee hee