All they need now is some great patio furniture. Now that Christmas is over and done with we are all keeping our eyes and ears open for a good deal on some to pass along to them. I hope they realize just how much the rest of the family is excited about the pool and how much time they will be spending there. It’s a good thing we all get along so well, so it should be a hoot!

Now a days they have so many cool virtual girl games to offer young girls that make the old fashioned paper dolls really look out dated and boring. The computer makes the whole process less tedious and totally more exciting and I can see why the market has dropped out of the paper doll industry. It took a while for them to figure out that the need for more virtual girl games were a big issue and we are finally seeing a good amount of virtual girl games coming out and the girls are just eating them up as fast as they can produce them.

I’m told that you can find lessons online, so that will be my mission for the weekend. I plan on staying inside since the weather is supposed to be cold and nasty and I don’t want anything to do with any of that. So with my fireplace going and my Internet I’ll be good to go for the entire time.

My sister has taught me the value of looking before you leap concept in so many areas in life. I remember her telling me in my teen years that if it sounds too good to be true that it usually is too good to be true, a saying that proves to be so true time after time after time. She is also the responsible for getting me into personal computers back in the 80′s when they were first being sold to the general public. Our first computers were Macintosh, I have always had a soft spot for Mac’s since then but had to move over to the IBM one and their clones because the majority of places that I worked at didn’t use Mac’s so it became such a challenge that I finally had to give up my Mac while she still buys from Apple exclusively.

Last Christmas we made a good team finding good gift ideas for everyone on our shopping lists and then hunting around finding the best deal possible, online of course and getting the best bang for our bucks. I had heard of a site that has great products for sale at nomorerack.com and before I turned my sister onto it I took a few minutes to find and read nomorerack reviews as well as Googled “nomorerack scam” to make sure that this was a reliable company to deal with. It really would have sucked to be swindled during the holiday season, something that I can’t even imagine happening but certainly hear stories each year confirming that it does indeed happen, all to frequently, sigh…..

Anyway – nomorerack.com turned out to be a great site that helped us find a good amount of our gifts at affordable prices and Christmas went off without a hitch. My sister and I bought computer web cams for each other so that now we can actually see each other when we want to. Since she moved to San Diego I don’t get to see her as often as I would like. Sisters were not meant to be separated by such long distances but at least today’s technology gives us a lot of options to keep in touch.

I’m married, so I have in-laws as my extended family!

And, for some reason, my family looks to me to keep track of who has what special occasion when. So for several years now at the beginning of a month I email out reminders as to who is having what special occasion that month.

In addition, I send out via the US mail greetings to mark those occasions. You can imagine that I send out a lot of birthday cards during the year!

Oh Happy Day!