praise!

So Dad had his testing today, and I'm thrilled to have confirmed that Dad does NOT have anything degenerative. Whew! This doctor believes it's probably stemming from all of the many, many cancer treatments Dad had years ago, and we now have a few prescriptions to try. Much relief!

In other news, I've been stuffing myself with delicious food for the holidays, finishing up my shopping (including meeting up with Becker! yay!), cheering for UNC basketball without having to be up in the middle of the night, and alternately trying to spoil and discipline the dog. He's such a cutie. :)

It was wonderful to experience Thanksgiving with the family again, but now I find myself experiencing a bit of holiday culture shock. For instance, where is my delicious forralt bor from the Christmas market? And when did so many people in my neighborhood decide to start putting giant inflatable AND moving Christmas displays all over their yards??? By the way, we light a giant tree outside our house. Mom and Dad have this elaborate system figured out, although we may need a cherry picker to reach the top next year. That tree is huge -- it took 50 feet of lights to wrap around the base branches once. That's a lot of lights!

Anyway, I'm really excited about Christmas, but it is strange to see it from a more European perspective. I'm hoping to kind of merge the two experiences together this year. Itunes, surprisingly, had a Hungarian carol available for download, which was handy, since I couldn't remember the words. So I'll add it to my eclectic Christmas mix along with Bing, Elvis, and Mariah. Now if someone would just provide me with some greasy but finom kolbasz... :)