The Lord's Heritage

 I have a great new game idea. It's called Guess the Blog Post, and I just post pictures and you try to guess what they are!! Just kidding ;) I thought I'd post about the past couple of days/week in our house. For starters, last week was finals week at SUNY Fredonia, meaning Jordan and I have successfully completed our first entire on-campus semester of college work. This plugs me at something like 36 credits, which means I'm a sophomore. I think the cut off typically is 30 credits per year, depending where you go...most colleges have the cut-off between sophomore and junior being 60 credit hours, so I'm over a quarter of the way done with the credits for a normal bachelor's degree. Yay.

Moving on. Last weekend (as in...the 15th), Jess and Kevin drove up for Christmas break, and we went to see the Hobbit in theater with them and a bunch of friends (happy birthday to Annetta!). It was a great movie that involved a lot of violence, a lot of bashing and hacking and goriness, plus a very nice moose for a few seconds at the beginning. I hope the moose reappears in the next one too...

Wedding planning has also been being done. Things like a guest list, decorations ideas, type of reception...et cetera. Also, dress shopping! Which is where we get to the picture part of this post. last...Saturday (I think?), a lot of us went to the Erie mall and went bridesmaid dress shopping.

 Well, first we went to David's Bridal to look at the dress Jess discovered. And yes there are pics and no you may not see them unless you have special permission from Jessica herself :)

 Anyhow, we then went to Macy's (where the van proceeded to die...oh well...thankfully we just got Triple A for the Texas Trip, so we called them and then shopped for umpteen hours waiting for them to come) and tried on bridesmaid dresses. Lovely, eh? Two have been purchased, and the rest will be purchased very shortly. There may have been a small fiasco later that night/the next day involving discovering that the dress is not made in certain sizes needed by some members of the party, but with the sewing expertise of certain others, a crisis was avoided and life as we know it cruises smoothly onward.

 Ah right...the jewelry! Charming Charlie's is a charming little jewelry store (women's boutique I think is the correct terminology). Annetta, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Rachel, and I had a lot of fun picking out and trying on jewelry and hair things while Jess and Kevin talked to people at David's Bridal. We photographed it so we could show it to Jess later and then come back and possibly purchase some after getting the dresses (yes...the pics are out of order...David's Bridal, then Charming Charlie's...then we met up at Macy's...).

 (I like how the chandelier makes Elizabeth look like she's wearing a tiara...)

 Above, Rachel and Elizabeth have a very technical and complicated conversation about earrings and making the earrings that come with the necklaces clip ons instead of the um...poky kind. I lost track of their convo about 3 sentences in (ok...2), but they got it figured out.

 Okay...so then we went to Macy's...found the dresses...and Jenn and Rachel bought theirs. And since the tow truck still wasn't here, we went back to Charming Charlie's and selected and purchased the bridesmaid jewelry.

 Then we had supper...it was delicious.

 And the tow truck came! He towed our van all the way to our mechanic, and then our neighbor came and picked us up from there.

 So that was a fun, adventuresome, productive day!

Moving on to Christmas: It is truly a Christmas miracle...my Christmas cactus bloomed for the first time since I got it several years ago.

 And my Texas Cactus has a cute lil "baby bump" on the very top...it's alive and growing!

 And we have these owl decorations on our tree. They're slightly disturbing.

 My dad got our cats a Christmas present too...they loved it very much.

I hope you all are having a lovely Christmas vacation!