"How's everybody doing? Not great. You heckled Santa for an hour and a half."

Holy chestnuts, I can't believe it's December & that Christmas is right around the corner! If you've read our blog, you know that this past week has been a doozy! I would write more about our Ireland decision, but I'm still processing it. I will say that Ben has been very supportive of my shopping & vampire therapy in getting through this ...more on that later.

Jack Frost Nipping at Our Noses
Last weekend we had friends from the Ireland team staying with us which also happened to be when Old Man Winter came swooping into Memphis. Right before bed Sun night we blew a fuse because a space heater was running at the same time as the microwave. We were out of extra fuses, so Ben decided to replace it with an unlabeled fuse in the fuse box.

Mon morning we woke up & the house was 60º ...apparently the "extra" fuse was for the heater which hadn't run all night. We're pretty sure our friends will never be back.

My Office Quote of the Week
“You livin’ alone now?”
“Yep, since Thanksgivin’.”
“What happened?”
“Apparently, I’m a donkey.”
“Well, the first step is admitting it.”
(the content of this quote was edited so as to keep our PG blog rating)

Vampire Lust
This has become a common term in the Benica household. This past week I got back to my junior high roots & jumped on the Twilight train. I had heard about these books being addictive, but I had no idea that I would start rearranging my life around them! Ben suggested that he run a loop around the backyard in his boxers before coming to bed so that he would feel cold & vampirish. He has also taken up hissing & biting my neck.

Ding, we're done!
That's right peeps, we are officially done with our x-mas shopping! I am 99% sure that in past years we hadn't even began our shopping by now. One of my very favorite things to do is gift giving, so this time of year is like Christmas for me ...oh wait.

Why is it that the people closest to you are sometimes the hardest to find that perfect gift for? I'm still waiting for the x-mas fairy to bring me front row, 50 yd line seats to an OU vs.TX game for Ben's present, but it hasn't happened yet.

Cali Update
We've been joking that we don't actually LIVE at our house anymore, we just stop by there to sleep. We've been out with different friends every night this week & have had a lot of fun, except that we miss our puppy dog. She has been protesting by pretending to need to go out in the middle of the night, getting on the couch & giving us the classic sad puppy dog eyes.

By the way, the first pic is of Ben holding my SECOND failed attempt to make chocolate covered pretzels - my double boiler improv skills are obviously lacking. I have us booked for x-mas festivities (Ben's favorite) all weekend. We are going out for sushi tonight though, so all will be forgiven. Happy Friday everyone!