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and I went to a local park where they have an annual "Candyland" Christmas display. Only it's more woodlands than Candyland. The place was packed with kids and the walk-through display was VERY small so we only stayed maybe 20 minutes. It wasn't even worth taking pictures. Afterwards, we just hung out and her house and caught up.

Last night was our (work) team holiday dinner. It went better than I was expecting, but that was mainly because my expectations were SUPER low. Store Manager picked the restaurant: a place much talked about (favorably) by our clients but one my foodie nephew, who works part of the week in the same Hallmark-y town I do, isn't impressed with. I...have to agree with Nephew. The place is lovely and there's a spectacular view of the falls but the food, with the exception of some biscuits we got as an appetizer, was good but not "$20 for a cheeseburger" good. SM told us all we had to dress "nice--something sparkly"...I fought the passive-aggressive urge to either show up in a Christmas sweatshirt and the faux rhinestone tiara my good church friend got me for my 50th birthday or else way overdress in a sparkly navy formal dress. I ultimately just wore nice black pants and a crimson sweater I got at Chico's probably a decade ago that has a little glitter. At dinner, SM gave a short speech that started and ended with "we've had weak sales the first two weeks of December so do better!" and reluctantly thanked us for helping her. She said something to the table about me that was complimentary but made me feel extremely uncomfortable; I was happy when we finally wrapped the evening up.

As for Christmas preparations, I would say I'm at...maybe 40% ready? The decorations are up but I've not gotten around to trimming the tree (Dad just put it up today; he hates moving everything around to make space for the tree and I was deliberately not saying anything about the tree, thinking if he didn't put it up this year, that would be his Christmas present from me <g>). Some gifts are bought but not wrapped. I busted my butt this weekend putting together a "let's not get gifts for one another" package to send to Sis after I found out she was sending "just a little something" (pfft, yeah, right). Nothing super fancy except I made her a Santa boot from a recycled plastic 2-liter bottle which, unsurprisingly, wound up being way harder than it looked and didn't come out quite as nice. I also baked her some "Ted Lasso biscuits" which turned out pretty good (I didn't have the signature pink box to put them in but I did wrap the box in pink wrapping paper). I was up late last night wrapping and baking and then this morning, I hit up the UPS store and was shocked at how expensive my package was to mail. I discovered that if the package is light but still large, as this one was (Santa boots take up a lot of room!), the price will skyrocket.

And something that perfectly summed up how my holiday prep is going...last week, I collected my neighbor's mail so she invited me over this morning (before the UPS run) for some tea and cookies (and of course she wanted her mail and the two packages that had arrived while they were gone). I was nibbling on a cookie and sipping my tea and thinking man, this is some weak tea...the neighbor gave me an odd look and then finally asked me why I was drinking hot water. I'd noticed the tea bag on my saucer but hadn't noticed it was unopened and not sitting in my mug. D'oh!