You Know It's December When...

....You've been hearing Christmas music in random places for about two months now.

....You've been invited to attend holiday tea at the Fairmont Hotel and view a live showing of White Christmas in a week's time.

....You're fighting the urge to buy everything in sight.

....You realize that living in Seattle does not provide you with your snow fix during the winter.

....You desperately want a peppermint hot chocolate every single day without exception.

....You have finished celebrating the end of the J-A-S-O-November months. (See below.)

....You find that the sun is consistently on a 45-degree angle from 8am (sunrise) to 4pm (sunset).

And finally....Jason wakes up in the morning and immediately pulls on his ugly Christmas sweater after declaring, "It's December!"

In other news, Jason turned 26 yesterday. It was the end of the

July - August - September - October - November

months or the *JASON* months which culminates in his birthday on November 30. Apparently, it's 152 days devoted to celebrating Jason. (And you thought I was crazy with my observance of the entire month of April for my birthday? Oh no. I've found someone a bit wackier.) For his big day, I gave Jason three envelopes with planned events for morning, afternoon, and evening. Here is a photo essay on our day:

In the morning, we went to the Future of Flight tour at Boeing. It was amazing! Unfortunately, they don't allow cameras on the tour, so I can't provide any documentation, but I CAN tell you that it was 90 minutes of interesting facts and features. We even got a tour of select parts of the largest building in the world which is where planes are assembled in the Boeing Everett Factory.

SO cool.

In the afternoon, we went to the Tulalip Casino in Marysville, Washington. We didn't spend any money gambling (self-restraint at its best, I suppose), but we walked around and had a nice lunch and discussed the reasons why casinos smell so bad. Afterward, we drove home and I frosted the cake I baked that morning. (Yellow butter cake with chocolate fudge frosting.)

The candles LOOK really cute, but they weren't very practical. They melted quicker than I could SAY "Happy Birthday" much less SING it, so they were good and done by the time my song was finished. By the end of the burn, I had "Nappy Something" instead. See for yourself:


And then, I found myself cleaning up candle poop before we could even eat the cake...


And finally, in the evening, I took Jason to Jillian's in Seattle which boasts $5 all-you-can-play arcade games on Monday nights. It was a little divey and a little dingy, but it certainly was A LOT of fun. We played Pop-A-Shot (I beat the self-proclaimed "basketball expert" in over HALF of the games), soccer goal kicking, water skiing, off-road jeep driving, on-road Hummer driving, Nascar racing, gun shooting, and Harley cruising. We even played Atari and Pac-Man! SO FUN. Jason won all the racing games, but I crushed him at basketball and Pac-Man. He dominated air hockey after telling me that he played in a friend's basement all through high school. In short, Jillian's was a great choice for a cheap night of fun.

Happy Birthday Honey! And Happy December to everyone else! :)