BARN CALENDAR!!!!

Every year I receive a barn calendar for Christmas from my mom. I remind her to order it and she orders it and that is how it's been for at least 8 years. It is published by the people who publish Country Magazine and if you have never seen that magazine let me tell you the photos are to die for.

So yes 8 years now I have gotten THE MOST GORGEOUS calendar ever. Every barn has a little blurb about it underneath; who lives there, if it's been in their family more than one generation, what the barn's purpose has been through history and where the barn is. I immediately flipped through this year's calendar and saw that two were in Ohio; one in Wayne County (an adjacent county to me) and one in Auglaize County (I've been there but it's far away). I had seen neither in real life. 8 years of calendars and I've never seen even one of the barns in real life.

Do you know where this is going?

I ALMOST PEED MY PANTS WHEN I FLIPPED TO NOVEMBER AND SAW A BARN IN ABSAROKEE MONTANA! Not only have I seen AND PHOTOGRAPHED that barn, on facebook it is my "album cover photo" for my Montana trip AND my caption is, "could be in a barn calendar" !!!

Next goal: find that barn in Wayne County :).

Christmas Tradition: TubaChristmas

Tucker Jolly himself! Yes, that is his REAL name!

It's like Where's Waldo....can you find me?

TubaChristmas is a strange obsession:

I got out my TubaChristmas buttons to take the above photo and was shocked to see I've played in 20 TubaChristmases over the years. WOA! Canton, Akron, Medina, Wooster, and Columbus, but none compare to Tucker Jolly's Akron TubaChristmas. It is the oldest one in Ohio and by far the best. I've only missed one since 10th grade! I'll tell you of a guy who has missed NONE: Tucker Jolly. In fact this was the 30th straight year Tucker stood up there directing the mass of 500 tuba players and the Mayor of Akron even declared December 19, 2009 as Tucker Jolly Day. He's a tuba professor at the University of Akron. Let's all hope he never retires!

THE LONGEST WEEK OF MY LIFE

The week before Christmas break has got to be THE LONGEST WEEK of the year BY FAR. I think this week felt like 250 days long and today felt like 300 hours long and 10th period felt like 10000 minutes.

But now I'm home on my couch and life has turned good!

TWO WEEKS OFF HECK YEAH!

In other news, I think the ice on the pond beside our house is WAY thicker than last Sunday and I'm ready to skate once darkness falls (can't let the neighbors see me haha).

1.5 Inches

Being married to an icefishing fanatic combined with having a pond 30 feet from our backdoor has its advantages. Nick is out there everyday chopping holes, drilling holes, jumping up and down, all while dreaming of when he can sit on a bucket and catch a fish through the ice.

This week cold night temps created the smoothest ice I've seen in at least 8 years. Bad news: it was thin and probabably not going to get to the "safe" 3 inches I'd need it to be in order to skate. Well we are both crazy so you can pretty much figure out what happened!! I had towels on hand in case of an 'accident' and I stayed near the edge, where if I went through I could still stand up, but nothing went wrong and it was totally great!

Back in the Game!!

For some reason, my house swallowed my GPS. Along with my purple bathing suit, my password sheet, and a mix of other things. Yep, haven't seen it since October! In fact I'm not totally sure it made it back from our trip to NYC. I saw it in Scranton PA but never again. Nick swears he saw it in our house after the trip but he's a guy and what does he know? LOL.

So yeah. Not being able to go geocaching was a killer because once pumpkins and cross country are over (late October), geocaching season starts (ok there really is no such thing except in my mind). This curse turned into a blessing because we got a NEW ONE AND I LOVE IT!!

Dakota 20.

Touch screen and the best part is it saves all the notes and hints right in there so I don't need to carry around a GPS and my I-pod anymore. Even better: the touch screen works with gloves on. :)

Up there are some pics from this weekend; we went up towards Cleveland to look at a used truck (yep Nick is considering upgrading because his S-10 has been beat to shreds over the years!). We didn't have all day but enough time to see some cool things.