Happy Holidays! (and bon voyage to Bon Voyage)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and continue to enjoy the holiday season. We had a very white Christmas. On Christmas Eve we bundled up to go down to my parents, but didn't even make it to the car. It was snowing badly, very cold, and poor visibility. My husband refused to drive in it. The next day we learned his brother came up the other direction and it took him an hour longer than usual to get to his destination due to the storm, traffic, and accidents. Glad we weren't on the road.

 

I didn't miss the celebrations as much as I thought I would. I have lots of memories to draw on, and it was nice having a quiet Christmas with just us three. We ate cooked cereal for dinner which tasted very good after coming in from the cold. Then we watched the movie "A Christmas Story". B actually went to bed on time and slept in Christmas Day (until 8 am; his usual time is 6:30, so we were happy). We ate a big breakfast of waffles, sausage, and grape juice, got B dressed and let him discover his stocking while we took turns showering and getting ourselves ready, then took turns opening presents. Christmas Supper was Tyson Pork Roast Kit w/vegetables which we popped into the slow cooker for six hours. It was so yummy and we had leftovers last night, and enough meat that it will feed us for lunch as well. Next time we get one (and there will be a next time) we won't use the seasoning packet. It was good, but a little salty for our tastes. We don't use much salt and pepper, and even have to be reminded to put it on the table when we have company. We have decided that from now on we are celebrating Christmas Eve at home together, start our own traditions.

 

Presents were good. We all got some new clothes and books. I got a Book Lover's Desk Calendar, some new video games, and a lot of new music to listen to. My husband got the Spiderman movie trilogy, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, some anime, and music as well. B loves his Thomas the Tank Engine Hideaway tent (from us) and his doodle board (from Gma J). We also got a Signing Time pack with three DVDs and a music CD (from Gma W). B loves watching them and does really well imitating both the sounds and signs. B didn't get many toys this year (mostly clothes and books) so we bought him another one when we went to Walmart yesterday to exchange a gift (a duplicate from my wish list). He was very excited when we got the Hot Wheels V-Drop. You can never go wrong with something car or train related. Speaking of cars, he did get a remote control car, but won't be using it much until Summer as we don't have much space to run it inside.

 

Sadly, after a week of troubleshooting with EA support over my Sims 2 Bon Voyage game not working, it has been labeled unresolved (I do wish they had sent me one last email instead of just changing the tag on their site though). I have all the Sims2 expansions and when we tried uninstalling the whole thing and reinstalling I tried the game after each one and it works fine until the latest expansion. So the problem lies somewhere with Bon Voyage. It's rather depressing that they couldn't find out what the problem is. The game worked fine for three months but last week suddenly stopped working. Nothing changed on my system that I'm aware of. The game simply won't start. I click on the shortcut, get the launch screen, hit launch... get a spinning disc icon then nothing. It says the game is running under Processes in task manager, but that's it. The disc still works as I can install with no problem and My Computer recognizes the disc. Hopefully the next expansion will solve whatever the problem is. In the meantime, I guess I'll uninstall Bon Voyage and play with Seasons instead. At least that one works. I will have to start over though, as none of my saves are compatible with previous versions. Oh well. Starting over can be a refreshing change.