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Showing posts from 2010

From Us to You ~ Merry Christmas!

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I had high hopes of blogging about various things this week, but it just didn't happen. Life has been busy ~ full and blessed. It's a busy time of year with lots going on here, there and everywhere. You know how it is! We will be loading up our sleigh and leaving town this afternoon...making the trek to central Arkansas to spend Christmas with John's family. We will come back home Monday morning. We are looking forward to a few days off and spending time with family. It'll be lots of fun and there will be an abundance of yummy stuff to eat! Nevertheless, I did want to post our Christmas card! We mailed our cards out on December 1st. I think we mailed out about 125 - whew. We love getting Christmas cards. Due to the fact that John works from home, all through the Christmas season he will check the mail during the day, but save the Christmas cards and we open them and look at them together when I get home. It's one of our little traditions. Our Christmas c

ICE!

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A couple of weekends ago, we went out for a fun "date day". We started out the day with some shopping and then we headed to the Gaylord Texan Resort for their annual "ICE" exhibit and then ended the day with a delicious dinner. Each year, the Gaylord Texan has a one of a kind attraction where they carve a Christmas exhibit or display out of nearly two million pounds of colored ice. It's a walk through exhibit - a VERY COLD walk through, 9 degrees to be exact! Obviously, they have to keep it so cold so that the ice doesn't melt. Before you can go in, they hand each visitor a parka and also encourage you to bring gloves, scarves and hats. They weren't kidding! Even with gloves, my hands were freezing. It was super cold in there, but super fun. We were SO EXCITED to find out that this year "ICE" would be presenting "A Charlie Brown Christmas". We LOVE the Peanuts gang. We have a little display of Peanuts characters out with all

Things to Be Happy About ~ November Edition

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December is upon us and 2010 is nearing it's end - what a year! It's time to post my "things to be happy about" from November. If you are new to this, I received a bright yellow, page-a-day desk calendar for Christmas last year and it sits on my desk at work. Each day the page lists various things to be happy about. Throughout the month I keep up with my favorite things the pages list and blog about them at the end of the month explaining why it makes me happy. I try to find happiness in the littlest of things and so many things excite me very easily. If you want to catch up, I started this in January so you can always look through my archive. It's only fitting this time of year that I quote Buddy from the wonderful Christmas movie, ELF . When asked by the department store manager "Why are you smiling?", Buddy replies, "I just like to smile. Smiling is my favorite". Here are my November things to be happy about... Holiday Shopping ~ CHRISTmas

Nine Years Ago ~ Where Does the Time Go?

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Nine years ago today, December 3, 2001, John and I met each other. Well, electronically anyway! Here's the story... For Thanksgiving in 2001, I went with my Mom, Armando (my step-dad) and Andrew (my brother) to spend it with Armando's family in Pearsall, Texas and also celebrate Grandma's (Armando's Mom) 70th Birthday over the weekend. During the evening of Thanksgiving, a few of us were sitting around visiting and John's sister-in-law, Angela (who is also Armando's niece), asked me if I was dating anyone. At that time, I was a few weeks away from my college graduation. I was not dating anyone at the time, but was focused on finishing school and looking for a post-college job. So I proceeded to tell Angela that I was currently single. Well, she got all excited and said that I should meet Jason's brother (Jason is her husband - John's brother). Are you confused? Hee Hee! Anwho, Angela went on to tell me a little bit about John and what

Sweet Christmas Song

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One of the many things I love about Christmas is the music. I L.O.V.E. Christmas music and John does too. I listen to it on the radio in the car going to and fro, on my computer at work and play lots of Christmas CDs at home and in the car throughout the holiday season. I even worked out to Christmas music this morning - it made it a little more enjoyable and tolerable (but still no fun at 5am). Nevertheless, Christmas songs bring me so much joy and cheer. We have several Christmas CDs and we took a few on our Thanksgiving road trip. It was fun to listen and sing along as we drove along the highway. Last year, I bought John Chris Tomlin's Christmas CD "Glory in the Highest". It is SO GOOD - we love it. All 12 songs are amazing. He sings a few classics and also songs written just for this album. We highly, highly recommend it! One of the songs on the CD is simply beautiful. It is written and sung by Audrey Assad who has such a peaceful and angelic voice. The s

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

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We had a wonderful weekend! We got caught up on several things, had some time to rest and the house is now decorated inside and out for Christmas so we will be ready to enjoy it all once we return from our Thanksgiving trip. It's nice to have it all done and the house feels so fun and festive. We took lots of pictures so we hope to share those next week. We'll be taking a little blogging break as we leave tomorrow afternoon to go and spend Thanksgiving with my family. We'll be back home Saturday evening and will have Sunday to recover and regroup before going back to work next Monday. We are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving trip and time with family. After Thanksgiving, we look forward to enjoying the Christmas season! There are lots of fun and exciting things ahead. Christmas card preparations are underway, we've got a few gifts bought and can now begin wrapping presents to put under the tree (my favorite thing to do at Christmas), more shopping and order

The Time is Near to "Deck the Halls"

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These are actually a couple of pictures from last year, but we are excited in the Ussery home because we are decorating for Christmas this weekend. Hooray for the holidays! We do realize that we have yet to celebrate Thanksgiving, but we will be traveling this Thanksgiving (leaving next Tuesday afternoon) so we wanted to put up our lights on the house and get the inside decorated so it's all done and ready to enjoy once the Thanksgiving weekend is over. We are going to make a few snacks and do our decorating Friday night and Saturday. We also play Christmas CDs while we decorate so it makes it all the more fun. John is getting started on our outside lights and decorations tomorrow. He's really excited and loves to play "Clark Griswold" and work on "exterior illumination". The weather has felt very cool and crisp lately - perfect for this time of year. We will have a recap and pictures soon of "Christmas Decorating 2010". We are looking forwa

A Salute to Veterans

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This morning when I woke up, I knew it was Veterans Day. I was aware of it, but that's about the extent of my thoughts early this morning. Then I tore off the page on our "page-a-day" calendar by the phone and it read, "Respectfully acknowledge the price courageous and liberty-loving men and women in uniform today and in the past have paid for our freedom, our opportunities, and our security." It gave me chills! We have family that have served in the military including my Grandpa, Armando's father, Kristin's father, John's Dad and John's brother as well as several other family members and friends. I even lost a dear childhood and church friend, Dan Amaya, who died while serving in Iraq. As I headed off to work, several people in the neighborhood were flying their flags. I leave early in the morning, so the streets are quiet. There was something about the peaceful neighborhood this morning and the site of "Old Glory" waving in the

Things to Be Happy About ~ October Edition

Goodness, I have been bad blogger! I haven't blogged in a week. Where has the last week gone? Life has been busy and we've been out of town with another trip planned this weekend. November is upon us and 2010 is nearing it's end. It's time to post my "things to be happy about" from October. If you are new to this, I received a bright yellow, page-a-day desk calendar for Christmas last year and it sits on my desk at work. Each day the page lists various things to be happy about. Throughout the month I keep up with my favorite things the pages list and blog about them at the end of the month explaining why it makes me happy. I'm a person who tries to find happiness in the littlest of things and so many things excite me. I'm easily pleased. If you want to catch up, I started this in January so you can always look through my archive. Here are my October things to be happy about... Lattes ~ Yum! My favorite drink at Starbucks and visiting Starb

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

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I am linking up with Jamie today for "What I'm Loving Wednesday". What a fun, mid-week activity to reflect on a few things making your heart happy. I'm loving that the Texas Rangers are playing in their first WORLD SERIES ever starting tonight! GO RANGERS - Beat those San Francisco Giants!! There is such excitement here in the Dallas area. John and I have been faithful Ranger fans all year, watching just about every game and we went to a few as well. We are hoping for sweet victory! I'm loving the devotional study we are working on right now. It was created by Focus on the Family as part of their "Essentials of Marriage" series. This one is called, "Who Did You Really Marry?" - which covers topics such as communication, personality types and love languages. We do a devotional every Tuesday night and we are really enjoing this study - we've learned a lot and laughed a lot. It also has DVD lessons with it which are really good. We are abo