Christmas Movie Marathon

There are a few things that my family does every Christmas season regardless of how hectic or behind we are feeling.  1) We bake.  We bake like we are trying to feed a small country.  Usually producing a ridiculous amount of cookies and fudge.  Telling ourselves that we have probably worked off enough calories in the creation of said delectables to consume a fair amount of them.  Over the years this day of baking has been deemed "Cookie Day". Stay tuned for photos and summary of this years Cookie Day festivities.  2) We shop.  Now this one is tricky because holiday shopping should presumably be completed alone in order to be done efficiently, but alas we do not do it alone and because of this my mother is ALWAYS the last one I have to buy for...  3) I shop with my dad.  Only once each year do I shop with my dad.  Our shopping trip is usually on Christmas eve or the day before. He hates to shop, I've told him every year for as long as I can remember that if he would shop a week or two earlier he wouldn't hate it so much, but I'm pretty sure he likes to despise the mall so I know I'm totally out of luck.  Luckily, the only person we have to shop for by that time is, as I already mentioned, my mother.  4) We see Santa.  An expensive and kind of silly tradition in my mind.  5 minutes with the man in red reveals a $37 charge on my debit card...  5)  We watch movies.  Most of the wonderful christmas movies we watch are ones that we don't actually have to watch, we listen to them as we visit or wrap packages or bake.  There have been a few newer movies to have a rapid assent up the holiday movie favorites list but usually the new ones fall short when compared to the real favorites.

Some of my all time favorites, in no particular order:

The Family Man (with the fabulous Mr. Cage)
White Christmas (because it always reminds me of my Grandma)
While you were sleeping (vintage Sandra Bullock is always great)
Love Actually (What's christmas without a bunch of brits?)
Little Women (the newer one with my favorite batman, Christian Bale)
Charlie Brown Christmas (duh)
The Royal Tanenbaums (Not exactly a christmas movie, but tannenbaum means fir tree, and they use the song from the charlie brown christmas, so I call it a gimme.)
The Grinch (Call me a sell out, but I still like the Jim Carey version better than the old animated classic)
Holiday Inn (Again because it reminds me of my Grandma)
A Muppet Christmas Carol (Love love love me some muppets)
Elf (instant classic)
It's a wonderful life (Because it's great. And my mom loves it.)


Did I miss any?  Which ones are at the top of your list?

http://movies.ign.com/articles/670/670493p2.html

Thanksgiving Snow

Ok, forgive me, I'm going to try to get APS up to speed on current events.  I'll start with the Thanksgiving week snowstorm, it was a good one.  Gwennie was pretty stoked to get to miss school on an already short week due to the holiday weekend.  Tula was excited to have something new going on, although she really wasn't that impressed when she was actually playing in the snow.  I initially thought the rain chain icicles were absolutely beautiful, but then after they kept increasing in size as the days progressed, I just ended up losing sleep over the thought of the heavy ice ripping all the gutters off the house at any given minute.  I'll be taking the chains down prior to the next expected cold snap!  Matty earned some street cred with the local adult beverage establishments by hiking around in the snow and delivering his wares.  The white stuff was certainly a great way to bring in the holiday season.