Merry Christmas

I'm not sure how these pictures are going to end up on the final post. For some reason I'm having issues with them. I don't know why because I've never had problems with it before and I don't think I changed anything. On my last post I thought the pictures were going to be side by side and all messed up instead of centered because that's what it showed when I was composing it but then when I actually posted it it turned out mostly normal. Some of the pictures still weren't in the right spots but they were at least not next to each other.

Anyway, on to Christmas. We went over to Mom & Dad's this afternoon for some light appetizers before our nice dinner at the Publick House. The Publick House is this really nice old restaurant in Sturbridge, MA that has REALLY good food! :)

We opened a few presents also. I got a gift card to Best Buy and a cover for my future iPad! :) The bank refunds their employees $300 if they buy a computer and an iPad counts so that's what I plan to do :)

Sam got a remote control helicopter that is too big to fly inside. It was very very humorous to watch him learn how to fly it just right. They are not easy I have been told :) I have a few videos of it but unfortunately I've never had luck uploading videos on blogger :( I guess all you Illinois-ans will just have to come see me and I will show them to you in person!

After presents were done we drove past a house in South Windsor that has lights in the front yard that are synced to a few Christmas songs. It's really neat. I have videos of that too. I tried taking some pictures but they turned out really blurry :(

Then we went to supper and it was great! I had prime rib and it was soooo good!

Notice the girls were all dressed up...Brad and Dee told them we were going to a fancy restaurant for supper so they needed to dress up. So we're all in the living room eating appetizers for "lunch" and Kayleigh goes "is this the fancy restaurant?" Haha!

The picture of the girls standing outside is them intently watching Sam fly his helicopter :) The last picture is just a poinsettia that one of my customers brought in for all of us at the bank...I'd rather have that than all the food we've been getting!

I would have written right by each picture but it didn't let me so sorry! :/

Eggs Anyone???

I cleaned out the fridge today. There wasn't actually that much to go through, it was pretty much just washing the shelves off. I realized there was a full dozen eggs in there that had been in there for a loooong time and I didn't actually know for sure where they came from. I knew they weren't mine and Sarah didn't think they were hers either. I looked at the date. Nov 9. So I asked my mom how long after egg's expiration date are they still good. She thought maybe they would still be okay. So I cracked one open and it was fine so I figured, hey, I might as well hard boil them and then I will actually eat them and they won't go to waste.

I've made hard boiled eggs before, let's just get that straight right now. For some reason my mind just went blank and I couldn't even remember what to do. Obviously because the results were ridiculous! I boiled the water. Then I put the eggs in. The problem is the water was slightly deep and obviously I didn't want to burn my fingers so I just kinda dropped them in there. They would hit the bottom and crack. Then a bunch of yoke and egg whites would float up to the top. Um gross! Some of them even cracked without hitting the bottom and I couldn't figure out why. I figured they must just be too cold and the water was too hot.

They finished boiling and I drained the water and cooled them down with cold water and then I completely forgot about them. I had to leave shortly after for all church Christmas Caroling. I remembered afterwards that I left them in the sink in cold water instead of putting them away...oops! I got home and tried one (one that wasn't cracked!) and it actually tasted good. Most of them are trash though :(

I don't know what in the world my problem was! I know how to make hard boiled eggs! You put the eggs in the water BEFORE you boil it!!! It just slipped my mind this afternoon. I got home and decided to take some pictures for everyone to see that I am such a great cook!!!

Why am I telling you all this? I should be embarrassed about this, but for some reason I think it's funny :)

Oh and Deanna I think they might be your eggs from the storm. Sorry I ruined your eggs...feel free to come eat them! :)

These are my lovely eggs! :)

Nasty,I know!

These two are for my ANONYMOUS (Hmm, I wonder who it is! ;) comment-er who keeps saying I need pictures of myself on here ;)

Oh and by the way my hair is not greasy like it looks, it's just the flash on the camera and the lighting in our apartment...promise! :)

Just to finish off with something I CAN do! My cousin Sarah Gudeman was here from IL for Thanksgiving and she had made snowflakes for her parent's windows and they looked so cool! She gave us a quick little lesson on how to make them and I went to Target, picked up some scrapbook paper and made some for myself :) They are so fun and I love how they look! I made some to hang up at the bank and I was supposed to make more at home for the bank but decided to keep them here because I like them in my kitchen window :)

Waiting...

I applied for a new position at Rockville Bank a couple of weeks ago and had an interview last Thursday. The position is for a Fiscal Assistant which is pretty much accounting. I thought the interview went really well and Bela (the woman I interviewed with) was really nice. She told me she would be making a decision in the next couple of days because she wants to have someone start by the end of the year since they are really busy now.

It's been almost a week.

I still haven't heard anything :(

Dana (my boss) tells me that's a good thing for me because they are required to call everyone who didn't get the position before they call the person who did just in case it slips out before everyone knows, which makes sense. Apparently someone is very hard to get a hold of because I've been waiting and waiting for a phone call and it still hasn't come!

Dana keeps picking up her phone and saying "Oh, Hi! Bela? Ya, she actually decided she's not interested and she's not going to take the position." or "Oh hi Bela, oh she didn't get it? That's too bad, I will let her know." She's so awful to me ;) Anyway, her and Rick (my other boss) keep telling me how awful it will be and how much I will hate it if I go there. You see they don't want me to go and they are coming up with everything they can to make me want to stay right now. I will say it is nice to be appreciated and wanted at work :)

Right now the Fiscal department is at the main branch but the bank is going to be moving some offices to a Glastonbury office which is quite a bit further and is not exactly a fun commute on the highway during rush hour. That is where I would end up being in the long run. So they tell me I'm going to hate it. I'm not so sure about that because the work sounds like what I love to do. I will admit though that they are making me second-guess myself :(

The pay is better. I had my review in Somers today and it was really good. They are giving me a raise and a promotion which brings another raise but it is still more than a dollar less than I would be making with the other position. It's a tough decision now because they keep telling me that I will have no opportunity to move up in the fiscal department and if I would just stay in retail I could move up more.

So anyway, that's my story right now...I'm waiting for that phone call! Every morning when I wake up the first thing I think is, maybe it will be today! Then the day is over and I'm disappointed again :(

I'll be sure to post with results :)

Sorry I don't have anything exciting lately. No pictures. I haven't done anything exciting enough to take pictures of I guess. Actually I wanted my camera last night when I was at my parents house doing wash. The girls were there and Kenzie came over to me with a blanket and crawled up on my lap, covered us both with it and snuggled. She never does that! Of course I didn't have my camera! I never have it when it would be ever so handy! :(

Typical Kenzie

We had some family pictures taken a couple of weeks ago when Josh & Kate were here. The girls were doing fine and smiling and then all of a sudden something snapped in Kenzie and she decided she was NOT going to cooperate! They were trying to take pictures of Brad & Dee and the girls walking and Kenzie just had a scowl on her face. Brad was getting after her so she decided to just stick her tongue out! Haha!!! Typical! :)

Thanksmas

Since Josh and Kate came out for Thanksgiving we had our Christmas now too. So that meant some early Christmas shopping. I guess that's a good thing though because now I'm done shopping for my family :)

We've (at least I have) been having a great time! Wednesday night we were all at Mom & Dad's for supper with Grandpa and Grandma Gerber and of course I forgot to bring my camera. On Thanksgiving day we were at Mom & Dad's again and this time I did remember my camera and I tried to take lots of pictures but there was a lot going on and most of the pictures I did take didn't turn out very good between blurry ones, bad lighting and my cheap camera. But I will share the few that turned out :)

We got to hear a mini Christmas program :)

MariAna liked talking on my phone while she was using Sam as a chair :)

Time to open presents!!!

Mollie showing the dress I gave her.

Kenzie liked her boots. I will tell you a little secret...she tried them on in the store and watched me buy them! ;)

Kayleigh sporting her new dress. And Dad is in the background playing with his new iPad that he got.

Kayleigh and Mollie got bean bags from Grandpa and Grandma.

Makenna and MariAna got a playhouse from Grandpa and Grandma.

Anyone notice a similarity in these next three pictures? Like father like daughter :)

Little cheese!

Just to end on a humorous note :) Perfect timing for that one :)

And A Whopper It Was!

Wow! I have to say this is one of the craziest things I've seen. What I thought was going to be just a little snow and maybe a power outage ended up being much more!

The damage here is worse than Hurricane Irene.

I went out plowing with Sam last night and after we were done we were going to go back home and stay at my parents even though there was no power. We plowed for a little while and it was really hard to get around, there were trees and lines down all over. It ended up getting so bad that Sam wasn't even comfortable driving around anymore. We didn't finish plowing and we tried to go home...yep I said tried, cuz we didn't make it. We tried about 5 or 6 different to get there but to no avail. We would be driving along and bam there was a tree down. Or there were power lines down. We actually drove right into some power lines because they came up on us so fast that there was no time to stop. Luckily we could back out and I don't think they were live. It was actually kind of scary! You could just stand outside and it sounded like gunshots were going off but it was trees breaking. And then it would look like lightning but it was a transformer blowing!

We ended up staying at my apartment because that's the only place we could get to...and there was still power! :)

We went back out this morning and things were a bit better but it's still a huge mess. We had to fill up with gas and only found 2 gas stations that had power. Each of them had lines of cars out in the road waiting to fill up!

So needless to say, I think we made some type of history, I mean how many times is church cancelled in August AND October!!! I mean seriously!!!

This was when it was just starting and I thought that was something to be excited about...not so much anymore!

Poor Kasey wanted to come in :)

From here on out the pictures are not going to be in any particular order, I'm just going to leave them in the order they upload.

Can you see the stop sign in there? There were huge limbs down right in an intersection.

This is a road off of one of the roads that Sam plowed on. No way anyone's getting down there!

I took this picture because the tree was so pretty with it's fall colors. It's like an oxymoron.
Sam had to move some limbs out of the way for some people before he could even plow.

This was at the very beginning of the storm when we had a whopping 2.5 inches!!!

This is right down the road from Mom & Dad's house.

On 140. There were state plows all over cutting up limbs.

I think this is one of my favorites. It looks like you're driving through a tunnel. There are trees from both sides of the road and the only thing that is keeping them from falling down is the power lines. Crazy!

The next two pictures are on 83.

This is at Mom & Dad's just this afternoon. First time I had been back since I left last night.

This is how much we have now!

This is outside my back window at my apartment.

Steve and Dorothy's tree.

Another of the tree in the back of Curt & Sally's.

I hope I got all the pictures on here I wanted to. I'm on my way out so this was kind of a quick post but at least you can see a little bit of what it looks like around here.