Here's a few photos from the Swanson Christmas parade. Barbara and Jim (elf and Santa) are Barb and Eric's neighbors. We discovered why no one here gets excited about dressing up for Halloween. People do it instead for Christmas (the parade anyway). The parade was small, as this is a small town, even with the next town over(Ranui) joining in.
As a Christmas gift from my company, we got to take Friday the 22nd off with pay. I also got a free-range turkey (costs about $35 here!), a bottle of champagne, a jar of cranberry sauce, and little mince tarts. That was very nice, but I am peeved that I, as well as the rest of the staff, was required to take vacation days Dec. 27-29. They wanted to close the office and if you needed to work, you needed your supervisor's permission. I think I should have discretion as to when I take my vacation, instead of having it imposed on me. I can't get too upset about it though, as I can really use the time off now to get moved into the house. We still need to do home improvements (paint, put carpet in) before we can move furniture in, and we need to buy a bedroom set since we don't have anywhere to put our clothes, so we're limited in what we can do. Today, Darin put together the cat "sky tower" and the cats are both sleeping on the top roost, cuddled up together. Awww, so cute!
