The Good, The Bad, and the Ugh-ly

The good...

Glen and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday! 
As per usual we spent our anniversary date doing some Christmas shopping,
before heading to a favorite restaurant! I sure am grateful to have had Glen

 by my side for the last 20 years!

The bad...

I put Cami on a plane to Utah this afternoon and we will not see her for another 2 weeks.  Although she is beyond excited about going on this service mission project in Mexico (with my aunt, uncle, and family), I am quite sad about her not being around this Christmas.

 The ugh - ly...

We got an Elf on the Shelf.

Okay, perhaps it's not actually ugly, but I have always had some inexplicable vendetta against the overpriced, trendy little elves. In the end, Ellie's enthusiasm and storytelling about her friends' elves made us decide that for the sake of our daughter's Christmas memories, we could swallow our elf-hating pride for a while.  "Delph the Shelf Elf" as the kids named him has only been here a day so far, but already he's winning his way into our hearts and I envision lots of fun adventures with the little dude.  

The really ugly...

There is no picture of this monstrosity, but I went to a white elephant gift exchange on Tuesday night where the hot gift of the night was a LIVE RAT!!!  It was contained in one of those rodent balls, but it still gave me the heebie jeebies from across the room and the distinct notion that next year we will be instituting a no live animal rule.  Or at least a no rodent rule!  

On a slightly different note...

The whole white elephant rat debacle reminded me when, as a freshman in college,  I was visiting my young cousins who lived not too far from campus.  I had lived across the country from them the whole time I was growing up, but was now visiting  them a few times a month to eat dinner, do laundry, etc.  One day they brought me to their basement and very excitedly introduced me to their new pet rats, one of which they had named Lara--named after me they made sure I knew.   All these years later and I still wonder whether to be complimented or insulted by that!

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