New Faces for the Holidays

We've got some new faces with us right now! This is our new parakeet Thaddeous. He came to the shelter with a cockatiel and then a couple more parakeets came in so we had quite the aviary. Everybody else got adopted real quick and Thaddeous, then Buttercup, was left all on him own because he had a bit of an attitude problem. He looked like he was getting thin and listless so I convinced Ian to let us adopt him. I took away his mirror. Parakeets can get a little obsessed with the bird in the mirror. And now he's a very happy fellow. He likes to give me kisses when I come talk to him. Eventually, I'm going to hand train him but I think that might take some time.

Our next house guest is Buddy/Barney. He's a Maltese puppy that came to us at the shelter. He's not all that well house trained and my carpets are a little worse for wear. But we are finding our rhythm. We are only fostering him for a week or so because our other board member is actually fostering him but she's on vacation. Buddy really likes my lap and I'm pretty much his default dog bed. It's pretty funny because when Ian scolds him for barking he makes a bee line straight for my lap. He likes to bark every time some one uses a door in the apartment building. And the little sucker bites really hard. You don't want to play/wrestle with him for too long. Ian and I have decided that maybe toy dogs are not for us. We definitely need a dog with a larger bladder.

So the holidays are shaping up here in Misawa. I think we have finally gotten our first heavy snow. The base is really particular about snow removal. You have to have your parking spots and sidewalks shoveled by 8am. But the way it's coming down I'll make Ian shovel when he comes home. Ian has been working a whole bunch. I barely saw him last week and he worked straight through last weekend. Meaning we have been largely home bound. But I have been making things when I get the energy to.

I made a tree skirt for our first Christmas tree. It was so funny because we really didn't have a whole lot to decorate it with so I went out to the thrift store and bought a tree full of ornaments for two bucks. It's looking pretty respectable now. I also got the stockings hung on the wall besides it. I might have to knit myself a stocking because Ian's is all cute and crocheted.

Ian brought home a huge bag of packing peanuts this fall from an antiques bizarre that he volunteered for. At first I was like what the heck are we going to do with that? He convinced me that it would make an awesome bean bag. So one afternoon when he was having a particularly terrible day I sat down with a bunch of my crappy scrap fabric and sewed a bean bag cover.

It's pretty simple really just a tube of fabric with two circles at the ends. I gathered the fabric at the ends of the tube and then sewed it to the circle. I put a zipper in it so that we could stuff it or unstuff it as we pleased. It took us like three days to stuff it because the zipper is a little small. Now it is a big blob in the center of the living room and Ian lays on to play video games. It's huge! but now the peanuts are becoming compressed and I need to find more stuffing for it. I'm hoping that people are going to have more to donate to me after the holidays. So when you send us packages send packing peanuts!

Other than that I've been making holiday deserts for parties. This is a chocolate Kahlua cake that is absolutely divine. I'm considering making a second one so that I could just eat it myself. There's a program on base where I bunch of wives mostly make cookies for the single airmen. There's a bunch of parties and fun out here. I'm not all that sure what we'll be doing for Christmas besides playing games. Ian gets five days off and one of those will be devoted to something epic I assume. I'm not all that sure what the Japanese do for Christmas, it's not really their holiday. There is Christmas stuff in the stores but no ornaments or trees. I don't think that ever caught on. I've heard that new years is pretty spectacular out here. Maybe we'll try and catch some festivities in the area then.

That's all I have at the moment. I'm working on some crazy socks and a baby quilt. Oh, baby news. Well, I'm definitely getting rounder and the boobs are growing - I might even make it to a C cup. At the last check up the heart beat was good. My iphone aps tell me the baby is the the size of a turnip and that I should be able to the heart beat for my self in the upcoming weeks. I'm over the nausea but I still don't have the desire to go anywhere near garlic. And pants, pants are so uncomfortable. Other than that I'll leave you will my last picture

My ginger-crack-house. Pot garden, attack dog, caving in roof and chimney