Christmas already?

So here we are, Christmas is already here once again. We all make the same proclamations every year..."Christmas comes faster every year" or questioning family members and strangers alike, "are you ready for Christmas?" I don't know about you, but I don't think it would matter when Christmas arrived, I don't believe I'd be ready for it. I can never seem to brace myself quite enough for the traffic, crowds and the never-ending advertisements. I guess I believe that Christmas is for kids. I mean I haven't felt the magic in years, but I still enjoy watching my neice and nephew enjoy it. Ultimately if we could focus more on the meaning of Christmas and less on the materialistic commercial side, I think I'd feel better about it. I guess that comes off sounding like Charlie Brown, but that's my heart.

Munk

When I was little I had a sock monkey named "Munk". He was my little buddy. My mom patched him up so many times, eventually the hose stuffing just couldn't stop poking through. I remember one time on vacation I accidentally left him in a reststop restroom and 30 minutes after being on the road, I realized. Oh man, was that hard to tell my Dad, but, he turned around and we got Munk back. Someone had propped him up in the restroom window and he was patiently waiting for me. :) In almost every picture on vacation from when I was 6 until 11 that sock monkey is pictured with me, either in my lap or I'm gripping his little arm. I still have little munk, he is in my closet and he looks a wreck, but all his battle scars were caused by love.

Coke

Hi, my name is Traci and I'm addicted to coke, soda pop, that is. Have yet to find any meetings I can attend to help this addiction. Not only am I addicted because of the caffeine, great taste and the burn "goin down", now I'm obsessed with collecting the caps. If your familiar with coke rewards .com you'll understand of which I speak. If not, let me clue you in. The caps have a code and all codes equal a certain amount of points and the points get you rewards. I think I've been doing this at least 3 years, but it's all a blur. The rewards used to be pretty good, you could get enough points for movie tickets, gift cards, movie rentals. As the reward program continues, it seems the point values continue to increase. So as you become addicted, you are less and less able to cash in points for what you want, but as they have hooked you into this "reward insanity" you continue to punch in your codes online in hopes of a valuable payback. At some point you may (at least I did) find your self digging in trash cans for caps and stopping on the side of the road for bottles that other people have deemed as trash. At this point you have reached a very embarrassing existence. I suppose there are worse things in life to get hung up on but these are not some of my proudest moments.

Road Trip'n

I made a promise to myself several months ago when I went on vacation that the next time I went, my best friend was coming with me. Well, I decided sooner than later that I was headed to the beach (I go through withdrawal if I don't get to a coast at least once a year). Now the friend I speak of is the 4-legged kind. I was so excited because he was going to experience all the great things a road trip had to offer. I did my research on http://www.dogfriendly.com/ to see where the best dog friendly places were, including activities and restaurants he'd be welcome at. He's a good little traveler, though he has a few rules. "Don't eat or sleep while the car is in motion" And "catch all the possible wind in your hair that you can in each new state you pass through". These are some pretty sound practices if I do say so myself. I remember as a kid getting quite the tangled mass from leaning my head out the window of the car or riding in the back of the pickup truck. No matter what life is coughing up at you, the Great American Road Trip is quite a good tonic. The moral of this story is, that Archie got to dip his little paws into the Atlantic ocean on Folly Beach in South Carolina and run on the beach with his "mama". Once he realized the tide could catch him he really put some distance between him and the H2O but it was still worth it to see my baby playing in the sand.