Merry Christmas from Hollywild!

Well, it's a little fuzzy, but it says "Merry Christmas from Hollywild"....which is where I think Patrick and I are going to make an annual pilgramage to see their Christmas lights as long as we're in Greenville! Patrick had read about the Holiday Safari, and he thought that it sounded like something that I'd really like. To give a little background information, Hollywild! is a place that houses animals that have starred in movies & commercials; they've got a variety of critters...but of course, at night it was hard to see them. If you go at Christmastime, you drive through (I think normally you ride on safari buses) and can marvel at the sheer number of lights....every tree is wrapped, they've got illuminated arches over the drive path, they've got inflatable decorations, whole lit scenes...it's really quite fun. It struck us halfway through that when we do this next year, we'll have a 6-month old!!! Wow. Still doesn't seem real.

Here's some of the lit scenes...I think these are penguins....And below are just a few examples of the extent to which they wrap their trees...

















...and here's the Red Baron, ready to celebrate Christmas....

And one thing that Hollywild! has that I'm pretty sure that no one else has is the "Enchanted Deer Forest" which, in reality, is more like the "Hordes of Deer in a Pen" but I guess it sounds better when you think of it as both enchanted and as a forest.

And let me tell you, we weren't the only ones stupid enough to fork out $3 for a paper sack full of deer pellets (the kind you feed the deer, not the kind that the deer leave when they're done eating) to try to entice the deer to come up & eat out of your hand. There were TONS of cars, rednecks in pickup trucks talking about how they "wished they'd had their guns," teenyboppers in their VW bug, and families in SUVs. LOTS of families in SUVs. And you've never heard such noises people (us included!) trying to use to lure the deer to their cars. For the record, kissy noises, clicking noises, and "Here deery, deery, deery!" don't really work. Deer aren't that smart, and there was enough food on the ground to keep them fed for weeks, so they were pretty much just sniffing around, going where they wanted to go...but we did get some good pictures. And, for the record, we both DID get deer to eat out of our hands...but not before we spread enough deer pellets in the car to keep a small deer family happy for a couple days.

Here's Patrick's arm, trying to lure a deer to the car...

...and here's another shot of a deer:
















And here's a shot (somewhat dim) of the horde of deer and, for some reason, an ostrich...(the ostrich is right in the middle of the shot, with two spindly legs instead of four spindly legs.)

We did have fun at Hollywild!...and let me tell you, there's no shortage of lights & displays...here are just a few to leave you with...

The Great Ice Storm of 2005!

Well, it's winter. I can tell, because there's an ice storm going on around me. There are more than 205,000 people and businesses in Greenville without power right now...obviously not us, otherwise I wouldn't be able to update y'all! The precipitation does seem to be tapering off a bit, but what scares me is this: it's been raining non-stop since about midnight last night. It has hovered right around 32 degrees today....NOAA is saying that the low tonight will be around 28. Which means that any water on the roads will freeze. See, today, the roads weren't the problem. They were wet & messy, but other than that--no biggie. The only problems you had today were the downed tree limbs, power lines & transformers, and all the idiots who don't know (or don't care) that when the lights are out, you treat the intersection as a four-way stop. But tomorrow morning...if there's ice on the roads, that'll make for some fun driving! Don't worry--we're at the bottom of a hill, so if I can't get out of the apartments, I'm certainly not going to be able to drive into work! (At least until it melts a bit...)

Our Firm did close at 3:30 today, and I was pretty busy this morning (my attorney worked from home, but had her Blackberry, so she was keeping me plenty busy), so I sort of worked through lunch...they let us know at 12:30 (normal lunch time) that they were going to order pizza for us, that it would be there around 1:30. Great! So, I just kept working, and when the pizza arrived, I just ate it while I continued to work. So, effectively working through my hour lunch, I was able to leave at 2:30--but will get paid for the whole day. Not bad, eh?

On another note, I have been feeling a little less tired; on Tuesday I had a burst of energy: I came home, fed the cats, did 3 loads of laundry, put up the dishes, wrapped some presents, made some crafty things...I was so happy to be doing stuff, rather than just laying slug-like on the sofa. I felt pretty good last night, too, and went out to the store, did some Santa stuff, mailed packages & Christmas cards... Of course I was excited about the prospect of not going to work today (which, as it turns out I did have to go to work today) and lifted by my full-of-energy-ness, I went to bed too late (11pm!), so am a bit more tired today.... Because of the Ice Storm of 2005 (they're not calling it that, I'm just going on past experience, and figure that they'll begin using their Armageddon-sized print and begin using that moniker, and I'm just beating them to the punch. Whoever "they" are.), Charter is not broadcasting any shows right now. Lucky for me, I've got the rest of "Criminal Minds" and another "Waking the Dead" that I need to watch. I'm sure there's a show about flipping houses to sell then people come in and design them that I've taped, too, and just don't know it yet.

Here are some pictures that I took from our back porch (yeah, like we have a front porch....) of some of the trees with ice on them.


I took a close-up from this one to give you a view of the tree that's in the middle:

And no, the tree wasn't like that before the Ice Storm of 2005....

I talked to Mom & Dad when I got home, and they said that Greenville Online (http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage) has some good pictures of the havoc this storm has wreaked (wrecked?). Once you're at greenvilleonline.com, on the right side of the page (you may need to scroll down a bit) in the "Related" box, there's a "Photo Galleries" listing. Click on "Winter Storm." There's a really impressive photo of a tree down on Coffee Street--that's just a few blocks down from where I work.

Here's the Bean!

Not sure if you can see the words clearly...I tried to add a text box to the most important parts (head, legs, rump); you may need to click on it to blow it up to see the words. But if you don't want to do that, here's the quick & dirty description: head is on the left. Left arm bud is right below the large melon-like lump (the bean has Patrick's head...what can I say?) kinda poking upward (if you look closely, you can see where fingers are forming); the right arm bud is just down from teh head, it's sorta blurry; the left leg bud is right above the pointy little rump, sticking up; the right leg is obscured by the rump (not sure what this says about my side of the family...).

And, the cat is officially out of the bag, and I KNOW that Janet is probably breathing again. I know it was so hard for her & Rachel to keep it from the rest of the family, but we had a surprise planned out, and I think it worked rather well, so to everyone who kept the secret--Thank you!

For those who weren't there, here's the synopsis:

I found out that you can order M&M candy in your choice of colors & have a custom-printed message put on them. So, we ordered two colors, pink and blue, and had "We're Pregnant" printed on them. Mom, Dad, Mee Ma & Pee Pa--we'll send you some, too--don't worry!!

Patrick sneakily replaced the malted milk balls from Granny's candy dish with the M&Ms, and just waited to see what happened. I didn't realize that Patrick had done this until Bill, dad to Skyler (born on my birthday), husband to Lorraine, and who have been pretty much adopted into the family, sidled up next to me, put his arm around me & grinned. Now keep in mind, I didn't know that Patrick had put the surprise into motion...so I sorta responded, "Uh, Hi, Bill." Bill then gave a pointed look at Patrick, and that's when I noticed that the surprise was now commencin'. The next person to look was Lorraine, who took one look at the "We're Pregnant" and looked at her husband, and said, "No, we're not!" And then Bill explained that those weren't HIS M&Ms, but ours...then Lorraine screamed out, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" and about that same time, Granny had Grandpa read the M&M to her, and then she screamed out, "Chauntelle!" I looked at her, and said, "Yup" or something witty along those lines. There was much whoopin' and hollerin.

Everyone was really happy for us, and later, Patrick's friend Stephen told me that he was really happy to hear that I was pregnant, because he thought maybe I was just letting myself go a bit. Tender words from a tender man...

It is true, though. I'm having to use rubber bands on some of my pants to keep them closed. It ain't glamorous, but it's the truth. I've tried on some maternity clothes, but I'm in that "tweener" stage--I'm getting a bit round, but not so much that I have the belly you need to keep some maternity clothes up (even the ones that say "fit under the belly"...you do need something to hold them up!). I may head to the mall tomorrow to scout out some other maternity departments (besides WalMart & Target), see what I can find. So far I do have a few pairs of pants that I've purchased in a larger size, but you have to be careful there, too, because what fits around the waist maybe isn't so flattering on the butt, thighs, knees, or calves. Lorraine did say that she has a ton of maternity clothes that she was going to give to Kala to give to Rachel to give to me when I pick Rachel up this weekend on my way to Nashville.

I've still been feeling well. Still not sick, still no cravings (weird or otherwise), but I am eating pretty much every two hours (which gets a little annoying at 2 or 3 in the morning). I'm really tired, so am just trying to keep an eye on the tasks I try to do, and not push myself. My bedtime is usually around 9, and I go into bed, maybe read for a bit, then drift off to sleep. I get up at 7, so that's been giving me around 9 hours per night, which seems to be good.

This Wednesday (tomorrow, Dec. 7) marks the beginning of the 12th week....the book says that the bean is now the size of a lime, but I still like to think of him/her as Bean.

And, no, we're not going to find out if the baby is a boy or girl until he/she comes into the world. Hopefully by then, somehow the ends will have flipped so the Bean has my head, and not Patrick's.