It must be awful to be a Shopping Mall Santa.  All these kids who are deathly afraid of you and their parents forcing them to not only sit on your knee, but then you're expected to be able to make them smile for a picture.  There's a whole gallery dedicated to pictures of scared children with Santa here.  I took Amanda to White Oaks on Friday and there were a couple of kids ahead of her that could be added to that site.  Amanda still wasn't impressed but at least there were no tears or screaming....

I know that I posted a comment to your blog, but Congratulations again, Karen and Bill!!!!!  I couldn't be happier for you if I really were your mom!

 

Anneleike, I hope you're taking pics of your Christmas concert.  I'm not sure that I know of anyone who is more suited to be in the occupation that they're in than you. 

 

It's been forever since I posted last and for that I apologize.  It's almost Christmas!  I have done 27 of my 30 radiation treatments and am looking forward to being done for good!.  My hair is starting to grow back - slowly - and so are my eyelashes, but the eyebrows are being stubborn, so I still have to draw them on.  My skin, where they radiate, is taking a beating.  Sure makes you understand how important sun screen is!  I will be finished radiation exactly one year from when it was confirmed that I had cancer.  It'll be great when it's all done.  I'm so thankful that I have had friends and family, and Marco(he's a category all of his own) to help me through the whole thing.  I will be so happy to not have doctors appts to go to. 

 

On the up side, I finally finished having all my teeth fixed (something that I set out to do last October).

 

And Most importantly, we have a new IKEA kitchen!  Marco and I decided that would be our Christmas present to each other.  New cupboards, countertop, dishwasher and rangehood.  A lot more cupboard space because we decided to have them go all the way to the ceiling.

 

I went to the Teletech Christmas party (sorry, "Holiday" party) with Marco and got to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in a very long time, which was really nice.  Bill Hodder took pictures, and for anyone that wants to see them, they are here.  We had our Christmas Party (and yes, it was called a "Christmas" Party) the weekend before.  For those of you who don't know, the building where I work is actually an old house that has been gutted and turned into an office.  What would have been the parlour is one office, the living room is another and so on... We have three floors so the Christmas party was like a big house party.  Marco and I took Amanda because there was a Santa Claus with gifts, however, Amanda was not impressed.  Suffice it to say that there are no happy Amanda pictures with Santa.  In fact, I think there may be a photographer in the making.  We had one that took family pictures (a gift from the company) and she was more interested in being on the "taking" side of the pictures.

 

Well, that's about it for now.  I have put pictures of my new kitchen, an updated picture of myself (so you can see my hair - ignore the grey ones!) and ones of my favourite subject -Amanda.