We went to the husband’s best friend’s daughter’s high school basketball game tonight and then out to dinner with the friend. We had a wonderful time even though both of us think the games we saw tonight were not on the level we used to play. It seemed to us the object of their game was to run down the court, try to steal the ball, foul a player, get the ball back, throw the ball away. No organization, no plays, just hustle and bustle and make mistakes. I hope it just happened to be the teams we saw tonight and not all the local schools.

It did bring back a lot of great memories. We enjoyed reliving old coaches, teammates and how good we thought we were way back when. That’s one good thing about marrying someone from the same school, although we were not in high school at the same time, there are still a lot of common people and things to reminisce about.

…. that W a l m a r t, forever now known to me as Wal-hell, would not be too terribly crowded on Thursday night around 7:30 p.m. 5 days before Christmas. What was I thinking???????

In truth, the grocery side wasn’t really all that bad, it was trying to navigate through the scores of people purchasing their nearly last minute gifts to pick up a few other necessities.

I have made a promise to myself and with God as my witness, I will not go back until the New Year… or we run out of dog food, whichever comes first!

Lee1990 says: “Make sure we can see the shape in the image.”

My cookie jar’s Santa face with a little extra added in Paint Shop Pro.

It is difficult to take pictures in low light, have you tried it? I’ve tried for years and have been somewhat successful tonight. I guess if I knew the exact settings, I might be more adept at it. I resorted to the point and shoot Canon to take this one and it ain’t half bad. You can’t really see the second or bottom shelves very well, but trust me when I tell you the bottom is full of Santa figurines. The second has a couple more Nativities and various other knickknacks. I love white lights and garland and find them very appealing. These two strands decorated the front door last year and we just didn’t get around to putting them up. I have a friend that keeps seasonally decorated garland and lights on the top of her bar all the time. I’m thinking I might use one of the strands and leave them up all the time here too. The decorations look like they belong in her home. I’m pretty sure anyone seeing them here year round would think I had gone off the deep end.

Used my photo from a few posts below.

The challenge became a piece of odd shaped wood in the fireplace.

BeckyB said: “Pretty much anything goes, as long as you can see the shape.”

Yeah well… you have to know I don’t see snow often and when I spotted this fiberoptic fellow at the dollar store a couple of years ago, I just knew he had to come home with me. I was very happy to see him come out of his box this week and in turn I’m fairly certain he was happy to see me again too. Just look at that cute grin!