Christmas at the SPCA

One of our new annual traditions is participating in the Syracuse SPCA holiday fundraiser - Pictures with Santa! We waited over an hour in line with both dogs, but they loved it. Max touched noses with a lot of dogs. He was so good for the picture - he stepped right up and sat down in front of Santa. They only took two shots and got a great picture. This is one that I took with my camera. Neika likes to sit on the bench with Santa. She jumped up and gave him a little kiss. I wasn't able to get a good picture of her with my camera, but the one we purchased at the SPCA was really good.

I also found another pet - a Wallaby. Essential a mini-kangaroo. A women in line right behind us brought her wallaby in for the photo. We found our she runs a travelling exotic petting zoo - which I tried to persuade my parents I should have for my B'day! It was a pretty cool little guy. I guess they are pretty easy to care for and don't make much of a mess. It's on my short list now.

Not off to a good start

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to make sure I posted on my Blog a few times a week. So here it is - January 26th and I'm posting for the first time.

Things have not changed too much here over the past several months. I spent much of November and December putting together holiday gifts. My favorite is an Advent Tree that I created for Nora, my cousin's youngest daughter. She is in love with all things sparkly and of course, pink. I created 25 mini shopping bags out of pink paper and ribbon and labeled them with a day leading up to Christmas. I had a lot of fun purchasing tiny gifts for each bag. Mostly they were filled with earings, bracelets and candy, but also included: temporary tatoos, many Hello Kitty items and erasers. The tree was finished off with a hot pink tree skirt (I love Hobby Lobby) and a customized box containing all the trimmings.

I was able to make a visit to Massachusetts in December for work and also catch up with a bunch of friends (I miss everyone!). The current and former Res/Title crowd met up for dinner at Sakura Tokoyo in Worcester. We used to have our holiday party there - so it was a fitting location. Check out Julie trying to catch zuchinni! I also had an opportunity to catch up with many of my work contacts and to do some visits with Anthony.

Cascade Settlement Agency is off to a good start. We have been up and running since October 1st! Here are the girls I work with holding a copy of our first funding check.

I guess that's it for today. I have some holiday pics of Max that I'll post later.