Birthdays and Finals

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I decided to decorate for Christmas this year the weekend after Thanksgiving and, since Jim was on call and gone most of the time, I ended up doing most of it by myself. However, Saturday night, Jim helped me get our Christmas stuff down from the garage. He found the Christmas tree and one tub of Christmas decorations that all belonged to the Christmas tree. I was quite disappointed when I realized we had no Christmas decorations except for the Christmas tree! I always grew up with TONS of decorations in our house - how is it that I have managed to go three Christmases without cute little decorations of my own??? Jim, sensing my disappointment, told me to go on a mini shopping spree and let me buy some decorations!!! He's the best!!!

I found these really cute Christmas Train stocking holders for our mantle:

We have a fake tree - but have decided to go with a real one after this year!!

This last weekend we had all the girls and I arranged to throw Kelsey a surprise birthday party at my parent's house. Since she doesn't live over here, it's hard to get any of her friends together. So we made it a surprise family party. She had no idea!!! Happy 10th Birthday Kelsey!!!

Here she is with her loot....

After lunch and presents, we took the girls to play Glow-Golf. There is an indoor mini golf course at the SuperMall in Auburn. It is a really neat place - the course is really dark and lit only with black lights. The girls love it because the golf balls glow in the dark and you get to run them through this little box that instantly recharges the glow of the golf ball.

Katlynne and Kelsey had never played mini golf - Kelsey needed some instruction:

This is what the course looks like WITHOUT my camera flash - the entire places looks like this:

Today I had my last day of seeing patients in clinic and I have one more final to take online tonight. Although I have agreed to work during my winter break, I am really looking forward to some time away from school. My LAST quarter starts January 6th and I am so excited!!! We only have five weeks of clinic and then we start our externships - which is when the real fun begins! I'm stoked!!!

Other than that - I'm TOTALLY looking forward to Christmas and spending time with my family (including my brother and his wife when they fly up here in a few days)!!!