MERRY CHRISTMAS...and all that Jazz

MERRY CHRISTMAS week!


We've now reached the middle holiday, Christmas.  Such a controversial holiday.  To say 'Happy Holidays' or 'Merry Christmas,' that is the question.  Personally, I'm perfectly fine with Merry Christmas (as evidenced by above exclamation).  It's fun, though!  Usually.  This year I feel like it snuck up on me something serious.  I feel wholly unprepared.  The list of presents I have for people is short compared to what I need to have. Wednesday and Thursday shopping for me.  I hope there's something left to get! 


Today I went to Amazon.com and downloaded a bunch of free Christmas mp3s!  Steal!  That might become a habit.  I did it last year, too.  There's some decent stuff on there for free. 


Also, at work I was in charge of putting the Christmas Eve show together.  I am very proud of how it came out. :)  We had other staff members tell their favorite/most impactful Christmas memories and I put them all together and added music.  I hope people like it.  It's very different from what I do for day to day shows. There are some beautiful/funny/heart touching stories, too. It's worth the listen.


Another thing:  I finished my scarf! Gosh. Took long enough.  It's a little shorter than I'd like, but the black yarn ran out before the gray! What the...?  They were the same brand, same size and everything. I feel jipped. 


As far as wedding planning goes, we had a pivitol moment last week.  We realized while we browsed church websites over lunch that we don't have the time to hunt down a venue on our own.  We decided to ask our mothers to see if they could help us out.  Our budget is little, and all the venues we've looked at eat a good chunk out of it.  We found a church that will do it for $300 and then a little more for a reception or something similar, but it's a Baptist church and doesn't allow dancing.  I really want dancing.  That's one of the few things I've always imagined at my wedding.


On another note, hopefully soon I'll have another post.  Something a little more interesting than an update on my life. :) 

Games my family has me addicted to...

There are a billion apps on iTunes for your iPhones and iTouches. (iThis, iThat, etc.)  A lot of them are below average, not worth the time or money to download them.  There are others, however, that are good quality and well, addictive.  Most of the ones to which I'm addicted my family got first and then showed me.  I immediately had to download it and play it on my own iPhone.  Here are three that I would say are worth the time to download for free or for $0.99 to waste hours on:

-Fruit Ninja- $0.99

 This wonderful little game is the definition of addictive.  You use your finger to slice the fruit and hopefully not to slice the bombs.  It has 3 modes: Classic, Zen, and Arcade.  Classic starts off slowly and gets progressively harder.  Hitting a bomb in this mode kills you dead and you have to start over.  Dropping a fruit in this level goes by the baseball rules: three strikes and you're out.  Zen is one of my favorites. No bombs. No lives. Just cut as many fruits as you can! Arcade is fun as well. I minute to get as many points as possible. Hitting bombs in Arcade mode subtracts 10 points. 

There are many different achievements you can get, even the 'underachiever award' which is scoring under 20 points in Arcade mode after the bonuses. This is actually a LOT harder than you'd expect because Fruit Ninja has this funny quirk of giving odd awards.  For example, if in Arcade mode you hit a good number of bombs, one of the bonuses you can get is the Bomb Lover award, 50 points! My sisters and I have tried to come up with ways to make it more interesting yet, like playing it upside down. It kind of hurts your head.

-Pocket Frogs- FREE

 

I LOVE this game.  I have no idea why.  My little sisters got me hooked on it. All but one of my siblings has it on their iDevice.  Basically, you breed and/or race frogs. Earn coins from selling or racing the frogs and buy more frogs, habitats, accessories.  We don't ever buy that stuff though because when you take your frog to the pond to tame it, you find presents containing that stuff!  As you level up (by breeding and selling your frogs), you get rarer frogs and more habitats for your frogs (only 8 frogs a habitat).  There's also a Froggydex that keeps track of all the different kinds of frogs you've had.  Mine is still at 1%. My sisters are at 4 or 5%.  Those are some of the elements that make it addicting. To level up, you need to breed and sell more frogs. Since your habitats only keep 8, you need to keep rotating them to have enough room.

One of the things I love about this game is that you DO NOT have to log in ever day for the frogs to live or whatever.  Those types of games are obnoxious.  I just think the frogs are so cute and you get cooler and cooler looking frogs as you level up! It's so addicting! 

-Cut The Rope- $0.99 (Lite = FREE)

This is my most recent addiction from my family.  This little alien Om Nom eats candy and you have to feed it to him.  It's a puzzle and skill game.  You use your finger to cut the rope and get the candy to the little dude and get each star along the way.  Each level gets progressively harder.  There are several different level sets, one which they just added.  You start in the Cardboard Box.  I'm now in the next set, the Fabric Box and I'm stuck.  It really teases your brain though!  As you level up, there are bubbles, spikes, spiders, etc.  It gets pretty complicated!  It's really a cool game, though.  Keeps you there trying to get all 3 stars!