I can't believe it is
December already! This year seems to be going by so fast. Fortunately we haven't had to deal with any winter weather (a.k.a. freezing rain) yet (knock on wood), but it has been quite chilly out. On Tuesday Greg and I met up with our friends Rose, Chris, John, and Jen at the St. Louis Science Center to see the Star Trek Exhibition. It was SO COOL! I was never really into Star Trek until Greg and I watched the "Voyager" series last year, and I loved it. I especially loved Captain Janeway, so the highlight for me on Tuesday was seeing an actual uniform worn by Captain Janeway! Unfortunately they didn't let us take pictures in the exhibit. You could have your picture taken by the exhibit staff at various locations, but the pictures were crazy expensive, so we just took pictures with our minds. We had a great time!
Things have started looking pretty Christmasy around here--especially with Spike Claus walking around! As you can see, he doesn't really like the Santa suit we picked up for him. It was a little too small, so we had to take it back, and they didn't have one his size, so he got off lucky :-) But he looked so cute!
And here is our pretty Christmas tree (a.k.a. giant cat toy). Lily loves it when we get the Christmas tree out . . .
(flashback to three years ago when Lily was a brand-new kitty who loved to climb the Christmas tree)
Fortunately she doesn't climb the tree anymore, but the ornaments are still too tempting!
And here are our stockings (the Spikes share a stocking) all ready for Santa's visit later this month.
And we've been doing a few little improvements around the house. Look at this coolest towel rack I found at Hobby Lobby (my favorite store) for our Route 66 bathroom! We thought it looked very Route 66-ish. We also installed a cool Ford light switch in the bathroom.
Today at work something pretty cool happened. Some folks from Arkansas showed up and were interested in learning about the 30th Illinois Infantry in the Civil War. It turns out that the man's great-grandfather fought for the Confederate Army in a Tennessee regiment. During battle in 1864, his great-grandfather captured the 30th Illinois flag. He later gave the flag to his commanding officer. Before his commanding officer died, he returned the flag to the great-grandfather, who then sent it back to Illinois. So I got to take this gentleman over to the base and show him the very flag that his great-grandfather had captured 147 years ago! It was
really cool.
Today is my sweet nephew Ben's big #1 birthday!! I am so happy that I was out in Utah last year when he was born. He was such a sweet little guy, and he gets cuter every day. My sister Lindy said that he even decided to take a few steps on his own the other day--he is growing up so fast! December is quite the birthday month. December 1 was my friend Susan's birthday, yesterday was my friend Emily's and Aunt Karalie's birthday, today is Ben's birthday, and Mom's and Sid's birthdays are later this month--what a happy time of year! I wish I could have been there for Ben's party tonight, but I'm sure everyone will have a great time. Happy Birthday, Big Ben!
Since yesterday was Emily's birthday, I thought I would post my favorite picture of the two of us. This was when we were roommates for the BYU Semester in Nauvoo back in 2003. I love how there is a raging fire behind us, and we're just standing there smiling like nothing out of the ordinary is going on! :-) We were at a prairie grass fire demonstration, and there were fire trucks on-hand, so I suppose we weren't in serious danger :-) Happy Birthday yesterday, Em!
