A wonderful weekend of not much

It has been a long, lovely weekend and besides the execution of a couple productive tasks, we didn't really do much. The upside to a weekend filled with a lot of empty space is the illusion that it was much longer. Most of my weekends spent in Austin just whizzed by with incomprehensible speed. Maybe some of that also has to do with the theory that the busier your week, the shorter your weekend. Here's the thing - my life is very simple these days. I'm sure you're already privy to that if you have read my previous posting of late. Yeah, sometimes I miss a lot of the social action and my Austin girlfriends especially. But the last few years have been so crazy, moving all over, switching jobs, and the like, that I'm really enjoying the simplicity for now. I think when we move next June that I will be ready for the change.  For now I am embracing simplicity and a lot of quality time with my man.  It's pretty likely that I will be teaching full time again next year, as well as still taking graduate classes.  And it would certainly be a blessing if at some point in the somewhat near-ish future I find myself pregnant.  The clock, after all, is starting to tick louder.  So the simple life in the mean time - BRING IT.  

Next week, Mr. Siss will be free and clear of the army!!  He has served his three years and now it's time to move on.  We are excited about the journey ahead, but I'd be a fool to not be nervous about the impending financial changes.  Thank goodness for the GI bill!!  He will be taking four classes next spring and that will at least help to pay for the roof over our heads.  

It has been utterly freezing here in Kansas all weekend, hence another portion of my reasoning for not really doing squat this weekend.  It is suppose to be in the negatives tonight.  Oh joy.  It occurred to me the other day that I will experience a colder winter here than I did in either of the ski towns I lived in!  Yikes.  We cleaned house this weekend, watched some movies, and as a first annual tradition, made some Christmas ornaments.  If I had the weekend to do all over again I would have added in there a trip or two to the gym and more reading.  My love for my laptop and all things internet really gets in the way of my reading sometimes.  Gotta work on that.  

Here are the ornaments.  We watched It's a Wonderful Life while we worked on them.  Mr. Siss had never seen it!  He tried to talk me out of it and into seeing something else, but of course I wasn't having it.  Later he did say he was glad we ended up watching it. 

The little painted sleigh and wooden penguin are Mr. Siss'.  He's very good at staying in the lines while coloring and painting.  And I enjoy watching him furrow his brow in intense concentration.

As you can see, they aren't really the most creative ornaments in the world.  But I wasn't really aiming this year to win any ETSY awards, just create a new, happy memory with Mr. Siss.  This is a special Christmas for us this year and I wanted to commemorate that.

I was kind of in a rush at Hobby Lobby (the movie was starting in ten minutes and I hadn't planned ahead.  I'm spontaneous, dang!) and so I bought these scrapbook stickers to glue on there.  They don't work that well with the curved ball so I'm not even sure they'll hang on until next year. 

Can you tell that I made pretty much the most delicate ornaments ever?!!  They have to be perfectly seated upright or else all the goods inside get messed up.  That's okay.  My mom still has ornaments that I made when I was six that have two pieces of glitter on them and they're still cherished.  That's what counts, right?

Okay, are you ready for pretty much the lamest Christmas photos ever?!!

Don't worry!  I am not using them for our card!  I'm either going to wait until next weekend for a do-over, or just use a super cute pic from Thanksgiving that I like.  I just used the self-time on my camera to take these and was in a big rush to beat the setting sun.  The first one is okay.  I'm not crazy about my hair, or the man's beanie.  Don't get me wrong.  I love me some beanie action, but not really in this photo for some reason.  And I would like it closer up.  Like I said, we were in a big rush and my camera was about to die too.

Did I mention that I'm totally not a fan of Mr. Siss' footwear choice either?  When he wears those shoes I always ask, "So when is lift-off?"  I freakin' hate those rocket propelled monstrosities.  But of course, he loves them all the more.




Okay, this second photo...I look so chunky.  Seriously...I look ten pounds heavier here than I do in the first one!  I also think Lola should have on some embarrassing Christmas flare for the next shoot.  The more ridiculous, the better.  We really tried to find Mr. Siss a ridiculous Christmas sweater, but man are they hard to find in this town!  They are really expensive on eBay too.  I already have one to sport from Christmases past.  I will note, however, that the two sweaters we are sporting here were Goodwill finds from this week.  That was the cheesiest one we could find for Mr. Siss.  He was pretty proud of himself for being manly enough to sport a woman's sweater!  Anyway, we can do better.  More on that later.