Mantis and the LEGO Candy Cane

This morning Santa Buc-ee brought something a little creative under the tree, something quite colorful in fact.  Take a look:

It was a pack of Buc-ee's pencils, each one actually embossed with the Buc-ee's logo on it.  Maddie's garnering quite a collection of Buc-ee's items under the tree.  A lot of them are staying there beneath the tree, a Buc-ee's stockpile - although the pickle flavored chips and candy she got on St. Nicolas Day are all gone.  

The Guardians calendar items are multiplying too, quite a few of them.  This might be my favorite item though, a candy cane.  By itself, it's a rather mundane sort of Christmas item.  But if you know the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special, and the significance of the candy cane, it's a pretty funny LEGO item!

Waffles!  Mom heated up some new waffles for breakfast this morning, and they weren't bad at all!  We're doing the Factor meals quite a bit lately, and it's been working out for quick meals.

Okay, so it's cold outside.  That's the word for it.  No fancy terms this time like "Arctic Warhammer" or "Cold Thunderdome."  It's just a huge bit of cold air coming down from Canada and making the entire country - except Florida of course - very cold.  We stayed inside for a good part of the day - I did some more work on the bugs booklet:

It's coming along.  I was also on the treadmill, and now have officially finished the Home Alone movies - all six of them.  So yes, this is the first year I've watched all six consecutively.  My final analysis is that we can probably skip the final three from this point on.  Home Alone 1 and 2 are classics.  Home Alone 3 is a small step down, only because of the lack of tie-in to the first movie.  But otherwise it's a fun movie!  Home Alone 4 is really bad though.  I like the actors involved, but yikes.  Home Alone 5 is a step up from that one, mainly because number four is so bad.  It's nowhere near the originals, but still a fun made-for-television movie that's relatively harmless.  But Home Alone 6?  This recent one I watched for a second time while marching along on the treadmill there, and it starts out fun.  You really have such a strong sympathy for the home invader characters, and a a dislike of the kid defending his home.  It's a novel idea but in the end, the same results as before.  It's such an odd thing to be cheering for the kid to get pummeled with one of his own traps.  I'm not sure what the writers were thinking here?  The only other highlight is the return of Buzz as a police officer, and that whole conversation.  Otherwise, skip this one.

Okay, anyway, the first and probably only Home Alone Marathon is officially done with.  If they ever do a seventh movie, I might be in on that. 

This is one half of the nutcrackers up there.  You can see the Buc-ee nutcracker to the left.  We have quite a few nutcrackers up there now.  Take a look at the straw goat too, plus all the other Christmas decor up on the shelves.  Mom did a great job.  I line up the nutcrackers though, as that's way up there!  Towards the bottom, you can see the amaryllis starting to really get big now!

It's doing well, and I'm so glad we could find one.  It was from Walmart early on, and sometimes these are hard to find.  We didn't find it at the usual locations, so it just made it special to get one at all when we did.  We planted it in that same glass container that held last year's amaryllis, a nice find we got at Sam's Club.  It looks good, and pretty soon we'll see those blossoms just in time for the holidays!

Also appearing for the holidays:  birds.  I haven't taken too many pictures of these little ones outside, but wow.  We have so many out there scrambling for food.  The surprise element this year are the hair downy woodpeckers, which are much larger than the downy woodpeckers.  But we see them with a lot more frequency, and of course the large yellow belly woodpeckers too.  We've got the usual rabble out there with blue jays, mockingbirds, phoebes, chickadees, nuthatches, finches, sparrows, those annoying robins, the mourning doves (we call them cows), tufted titmouses, and we've got quite a few bluebirds again, to Mom's delight.  We keep the feeders stocked out there, and there's always a line at the buffet!

It is cold out there though.  But that's winter, right?  At night, it's cold enough to snow, but sadly no precipitation out there whatsoever.  We can't seem to time that right for a winter wonderland, but we have hope.  

Look what came in the mail!  This is the medal I got for the virtual Thanksgiving trail I did back in November.  It's cute, and it opens up to show the interior of the tree there, a nice little cozy spot that reminds you of the virtual trail I was walking along.

Tonight we dropped Maddie off for taekwondo, and while she was there, we were getting some Christmas shopping done for Christmas dinner.  We even picked up some holiday cheese for snacking on before then:

These are like the October-themed cheeses, but with shapes to go with Christmas.  We passed on the Cheddar Christmas tree, but picked up the holiday snowman and ugly sweater ones.  Those will be delicious!  We also picked up the ingredients for Mom's addictive holiday treat, the rice checks and Cheerios, the white chocolate - all of it goes together to make something the locals here call "Christmas Crack."  

Tonight's journey home was a long one.  A dump truck turned over at the usual spot on Browns Bridge Road, right there at Whispering Pines where the visibility is low with curves and hills, and everyone racing around until slamming on the brakes for left turning cars.  The dump truck chose not to run into someone, instead heading off the road and turning over into a wooden fence.  It's a big thing trying to right a dump truck on a narrow winding road in freezing cold temperatures.  

We did get home though, and after that we had time for eating some and then watching "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."  It's the second night of Hanukkah - we'll share another picture tomorrow of the menorah, but meanwhile tonight we were getting to bed earlier.  We read from "Hogfather" a few more pages, and after that said our prayers.  It was time for some of this new hot beverage that Mom picked up for us, and then a good night's rest.