I know there are people all over the country hoping for a white Christmas this year, but we’ve already had our fill and then some.  We’ve had snow off and on since the first part of October and it’s snowing again.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the snow, as long as I can watch it from the comfort of the warm house.  But, it is getting me more into the Christmas mood.  Which means I’m ready to get out the tree and get out all my pretty little decorations.

I’m kind of depressed that my Huskers didn’t win the Big 12 Championship last night, but they didn’t do too bad.  They did give the #3 team in the nation a run for their money, and only lost by a single point.  And, we do get to go to a bowl game:  The Holiday Bowl.  Not one of the more impressive bowl games, but a bowl game none the less.

Well, I need to get back to work on my quilts.  I’m hoping to have a few done before Christmas, to give as gifts to a few special people.  Plus, the new “Alice” movie starts on Sci-Fi tonight and I’ve been waiting a long time to see this one.  Hope it’s half as good as “Tin Man” was.  Until tomorrow. 

Whoo hoo, today is one of the biggest days for Nebraska football.  I’m a total Husker fan, which most of the people around here are.  Unlike most other places around the nation, Nebraska doesn’t have any professional sports teams to root for, so we take our college football very serious.  And, in the past few years, we haven’t had a lot to cheer about.  But that all changed last year when Bo Pelini took over as head coach and former head coach Tom Osborne took over as the school’s Athletic director.

Tom Osborne was one of the last great coaches for Nebraska (football).  After he retired, things kind of went downhill.  It wasn’t until Bill Calahan took over as head coach that our boys saw their worst games ever.  Calahan was a former professional football coach and decided to completely throw the old playbook out the window and created his own thing.  That thing sucked so bad that he and the athletic director at that time were both asked to leave.  Nobody in the state of Nebraska had anything nice to say about either one of them.

But, times have changed and Nebraska is making a huge comeback.  Out of 12 games, we only lost 3.  That’s not bad compared to what we’d done in the past 5 years.  And, tonight we go up against the #3 team in the nation, the Texas Longhorns.  It’s the Big 12 Championship, and our chance to once again make it to a bowl game.  Even if we lose, we still have a chance to get to a bowl game, but not one of the more well-known games.  I just want to see our boys be the big team they were in the glory days.  I miss watching other teams run in fear because the Nebraska Black Shirts were coming onto the field.  Our Black Shirts are back, and in a big way.  Now, I just hope our offense plays as well as they did last week against Colorado.

But, no matter what the end result, I’ll be thrilled that I got to watch my boys play one more time.  I’ve been a fan of Nebraska football since I was a little kid, and I’ll be a fan till I die.  So, let’s get this party started and Go Big Red!!!!!

Is your Christmas tree up yet?  Ours isn’t.  We haven’t even thought about getting our things out to get things ready for Christmas yet.  Though he loves this time of year, my hubby hates to go in the back and dig the tree out of storage.  We used to get a real tree every year, but got to a point where we just couldn’t afford it anymore.  My parents gave us their big artificial tree about 8 years ago as they didn’t have the room to put it up anymore, and with my dad being in a wheelchair, it was hard for them to put it up and decorate it.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed having an artificial tree these past few years.  I think of it as my part for the Go Green movement.  I try to be ecologically minded, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds.  With an artificial tree, I know that somewhere out there is a live tree that will get to see another year because I didn’t want to have it cut down just so I could have a real tree in my home for a few weeks.  Although I do miss the smell of a fresh Christmas tree, I don’t miss having to vacuum up all the dropped needles from my carpets.

I am hoping to have my tree up and ready to go in the next few days.  It will all depend on how energetic my hubby feels and whether I can convince him to dig the tree out of storage.  Not his favorite job, but once he’s got the tree set up, his job is over.  The kids and I will do all the decorating.  Even though they’re both teenagers now, they still enjoy putting the decorations on the tree.  At least now they can reach all the way to the top.  LOL

I have always been a history buff.  Oddly though, not all history interests me.  I’m an ancient history fanatic, and the further back in time we go, the better I like it.  My biggest dream is to some day get to go to the British Isles and see some of the most historic places for myself.  Of course, I’d love to see Stonehenge, but there are so many other stone henges around the British Isles and most people don’t even realize that.

I’d also love to go to Malta.  I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother was a big fan of the movie “The Maltese Falcon”.  Honestly, to this day I’ve never seen the movie.  But I was shocked to find out that the island of Malta is thought to have been one of the first bases of civilization in Europe.  Some of the ruins they’ve found on the island date back to more than 5,000 years BC.  They’ve also found tons of little statutettes that resemble a woman’s figure.  Because of this, many scholars have thought that it was a matriarchal society.  In other words, women ran the show in those days, but this is just a hypothosis.

While looking for more information on ancient “stuff”, I did run across a pretty cool new site.  It’s called the Virtual Museum, and it’s filled with pictures and information about hundreds of societies that flurished across Europe since the dawn of time.  Some of the objects are deemed to be more than 40,000 years old.  However, the site is rather new and there is still alot of work being done.  But it’s still a pretty cool place to check out.  Especially if you’re like me and don’t see yourself getting to Europe anytime soon.  So, for now I’ll just bookmark this site and live vicariously though it.  I have no life. 

I totally refuse to grow up, and tonight I even proved that to myself.  My daughter came into my room here a couple hours ago and told me that all the Pixar short films was on ABC family.  So, I flipped the channel over and watched the first couple of short flix.  The next thing I knew is that I’d sat here for a full 2 hours watching the entire show.  But, I can’t help it.  I love those kinds of movies.  I think I saw the movie Cars like a dozen times.

Being a mom, I’ve been subjected to kids movies for most of the past 20 years.  But, my kids have gotten to a point where they’ve kind of grown out of this movie niche, but I still love them.  I remember when the movie “James and the Giant Peach” first came out on VHS.  My son had gotten it for his birthday or Christmas, or something like that.  He and his little sister watched that movie over and over again.  I can still almost recite the entire thing by heart.  It was a great movie, though.

Ironically, I’m not the only one in our family who enjoys these computer animated, made-for-kids type movies.  My mother-in-law is the same way.  Whenever another of these types of movies comes out, she always asks my kids if they want to see it.  Not because she wants to be the sweet grandmotherly type (which she is anyway), but because she doens’t want to look silly going to see the movie by herself.  I’ve told her more than once that I’d be more than happy to go with her, but she just thinks we’d both look weird.  LOL

My theory?  When you stop enjoying the sillier things in life, it’s time to give up the ghost.