Murder at the Grant's!

If my Aunt Margaret wrote the song “A Few of my Favorite Things,” murder mystery dinner parties would be included in the first verse. Traditionally, when she comes to visit we always celebrate with such a dinner and this visit was no exception.

This dinner had a 1950’s theme. Guess who was Bobby Sox!

Detective Dad Gervens making a recreation of the murder for investigative purposes
Dave played a greasy mechanic and I was the victim’s sweet, innocent little sister. At least one of us was type cast!
Aunt Katy aka "Miss Kansas City" wound up being the murderer! Dave and Gilbert guessed correctly.
Aunt Margaret styling in her pedal pushers
Uncle Gilbert was a Russian "scientist" and he delivere a splendid performance complete with an accent!

Uncle Martin's song and dance. He has some serious moves!


Thanks Mom and Dad for all the hard work you put into making this dinner a success.

Budgie Boy!

My grandmother’s Christmas present was staying at my house for the week before Christmas and was scared to death until my bird whisperer Mother-in-Law had him out of his cage and finger trained within a day! Mom and I didn't give him a name (that was going to be Gee's privilege) but since Budgie is another name for a parakeet I kept calling him "Budgie" "Budgie Boy" "Budge" or "Budgie Butt."

Dirty Grinchmas

It’s that magical time of year again when we try to screw over our brothers and sisters in Christ with the worst gift possible

I'm not sure if it was the kid or the engineer in Doyle that made him so fascinated with this little gadget.

The paper mache bobble head bear Santa! Jake is thrilled
This was supposed to be the worst gift of all, but considering the recipient it was quite fawned over.


I didn't get a picture, but Sandi wound up with the dirtiest gift of all. A CD of the rosary with Pope John Paul II and Virgin of Guadalupe car air fresheners. Congrats Mrs. Sandi!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Poor Dad. Having a December 14^th birthday means that all your gifts are wrapped in Christmas paper, and the only celebration you can get is whatever people can fit around the Holiday rush! This year, some friends and family met up for lunch at Greenbriar BBQ.

We got Dad some politically incorrect T-Shirts from Dixie Outfitters. Hopefully he won't wear them while Dave's parents are in town! :p

SCS party

The SCS Christmas party this year was held at a Greek restaurant downtown which I forget the name of at the moment. The food was pretty good particularly the Greek salad which I feel in love with. Had to run out and buy feta cheese and olives the day after!

It’s neat to have church family at company events now! We are actually planning a BBBC coup d’état of the entire company, but don’t tell Bryan.

One cool thing this year was the DJ/MC group which hosted a game show for us to compete in. As if I and everyone else who’s been around me for longer than 5 minutes didn’t already know, Jenn is entirely too competitive. Throw prize money in the mix and you have a rabid beast on your hands. Still, I didn’t want to get up there alone so Mac graciously agreed to suffer with me. All was well and good until the first draft picks got up to play and I realized that Michael (who was sitting at our table) was answering everything correctly! He can quote every movie and sing every song produced from 1960 until now. *sigh* This was hurting my vicious, competitive, Stewie Griffin-like heart so I did the logical thing and scratched out Mac and mines names and placed them on what I thought was a separate round from Michael’s group. Turned out it was the winner’s bracket so the names were promptly changed back.

Now it was time to face the music (and movies) against Michael. Fortunately, the questions were about dumb Pop culture stuff, otherwise we’d have a problem on our hands with Mac.

Gosh, I'm short!

I was feeling pretty good about myself after gaining a sizeable lead with Sweet Home Alabama, Top Gun, and the sound of bowling pins.

The lead was short lived however as Michael came back from behind and kicked my butt with “A Few Good Men” quote that I didn’t buzz in in time for (note the score).

Even the worst looser in the world summoned the strength to take pictures of her Dad’s round. Perhaps a Grant could “represent” this evening after all. Alas, it was not meant to be. Didn’t know Dad was so up on his Paula Abdul discology though. :P I think he got a little illegal help from Dean.

Well, I guess being a sore loser pays off when you compete against such a gracious, sweet winner. I was all set to change my ways when he reinforced my bad behavior by handing over his prize money after his Christmas bonus envelope came around. Thanks Michael for exhibiting the true spirit of the season unlike some of us…hehe. And thanks Bryan and Dean for handing out money envelopes! I warn you that next year, VICTORY SHALL BE MINE!

Feed My Sheep!

It was time to hit the ground running as soon as our plane landed. I started working on Dad’s birthday cake early Wednesday morning and it’s a good thing too. This is actually the second attempt. The first sheep’s head fell off! I wound up getting to church in the nick of time and looking like a hobo once I got there.

Why a sheep cake for a 48 year-old man? Well, he is our pastor and since the cake was going to church….I wrote “Thanks for feeding us Preacher! Happy Birthday!” on the base. My smarty-pants parents were the first to notice that I omitted the comma between “us” and “Preacher” indicating that we were must be eating roast preacher every Sunday! I made sure they realized it was their fault for not “learning” me any better during my homeschooling days. :)

Disney Therapy Day 4

We spent our final day at our favorite place in the “world” – World Showcase! Miyuki was here making candy and we got to watch two of her shows (one to make up for missing her last trip!). She choose Mom to make a candy for, and Mom picked a frog for me since Miyuki had made her a porcupine back in May.

Miyuki is so petite! I feel like a beast standing next to her. :)

After touring World Showcase, watching the Voices of Liberty and the American Adventure, and eating at Mexico (and Morocco and France for desserts!), it was almost dark and time to head over to MGM. We really just wanted to see the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights at MGM, but wound up having time to ride the Rock and Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror before it was dark enough to appreciate the light display. We stopped at all the Photopass setups since my camera doesn’t take good pictures at night.

It was time to call it an early evening since we had to be up at 5:00 to catch our flight home.
We will miss Donald greeting us each day!

Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

The party was also on day three (after a very looong nap) but it deserves its own post. Most of these pcitures are of me since "Mrs. Merry Christmas" didn't want her picture taken. :)

We rode the speedway cars just for kicks since the line wasn’t long. I haven’t ridden this since I was about 8 years old! Of course Donald went everywhere with us this night. What’s a Christmas party without a duck to share it with?

A scene from one of the Christmas shows. Isn't Donald cute in his little sweater?

We got to meet the duck himself! He was thrilled that we brought along a likeness of him. Here he is with his very own Christmas tree lot. It’s nice to see more attention paid to Donald in recent years. Whoever thinks it’s all about the Mouse is sorely mistaken. :)

The parade was fantastic and more up close and personal than Spectro or the 3:00 parade. It reminded me more of the Jammin’ Jungle Parade as far as closeness and interaction with the audience.




Behold the castle in all its glory! This is the prettiest I’ve ever seen it.
We came, we saw, we rode several rides, we ate lots of cocoa and cookies, now we need to crash! Of course the night is young at 1:00 a.m., right?