Christmas tree at 30th Street Station, Philadelphia

F.B. & I exchanged gifts Christmas Eve. We're poor, so we just got each other 1-2 gifts each. I got F.B. The Dark Knight Trilogy Dvd & 84 mini bags of Herr's Potato Chips!

My not so creative Christmas and New Year's nails. I had wanted to do red/white candy cane stripes on my ring fingers, but it turned out looking more like a bloody mummy...so yeah... I just went with something simple, lol!

These aren't new polishes. The Sally Hansen Celeb City I've owned since 2010. And my ring finger has China Glaze Make A Spectacle layered over the silver.


One of my new favorite polish brands is Zoya! I first bought three of their 2012 Holiday collection. Blaze, Aurora & Storm a few months ago. And then with the $20 Amazon giftcard I earned from Valued Opinions, I bought two more polishes.


Just a quick bit of info about Valued Opinions. I like it better than Swagbucks because you earn money faster. You do online surveys, some you may qualify for and some you may not. I joined for free in September 2012 and I earned my $20 by December 2012, so not bad at all! Even better when I claimed my $20 giftcard from Amazon, the code was sent to me instantly through email! So I got to buy my nail polish on Amazon that same night. (You can also get a Visa card, or Macy's, Itunes Giftcards, etc.)

And Zoya Roxy. Zoya Roxy didn't want to photograph correctly. But it's a magenta jelly polish with silver sparkles in it.



Disclosure: Valued Opinions did not ask me to write this blog. I wrote it because I enjoy doing the surveys & earning giftcards. The two polishes below were purchased with my $20 reward from Valued Opinions. The rest were purchased with my own money.

  

 

Rockwell Handmade is now called: From Lebow With Love.

This pretty little winter ballerina is from Rockwell Handmade. A shop started by one of my childhood friends Leah. She makes handmade dolls, bowties & whatever else strikes her fancy, from pretty vintage fabric she finds.

You can even customize your doll orders with what colors you prefer. I wanted our ballerina doll to have black hair. :-) And she is so gorgeous in person! And much larger than you would think. She is approx 17" tall.
 
I ordered the Winter Ballerina for my little one year old niece Zia in the Philippines. (My Sister in law's blog.). So we will be shipping this dolly off in the New Year as a belated Christmas gift.

 

Back in November, Enkelini Nails was having a 50% off sale for Black Friday. I decided to order 3 more colors. (I've posted about Enkelini Polish before).



Shampayne is a silver gold holographic polish. In the sun or camera flash you can see a really strong holo. Indoors it has a nice silvery gold shimmery color. Love this one!

*All polish was purchased by myself.

December 19th, was our 3 year wedding anniversary! We just had a laid back anniversary this year.


I took F.B. to see The Hobbit for his anniversary gift. We didn't get home until close to 1am. (The movie wasn't my cup of tea... and it's very long, 3 hours!) We went Tuesday evening and the movies are quite empty on a weeknight!


We decided to stay home on our anniversary and order Chinese Takeout from one of my favorite places, King Wok. (We got an updated menu and it looks like they only sell Chinese now, no more Japanese. The picture below is of their old menu). We ordered so much food though, I think we have leftovers for 3 days now! :-)


So let's talk about immigration again. They received our paperwork and sent F.B. a notice. The paper he received is his 1 year extension. He also got his biometrics appointment for January 10th. Where he gets fingerprinted and his photo taken for his new permanent resident card.

But... our lawyer said the USCIS Vermont center is so backlogged with paperwork it is taking 8 months to 1 YEAR to process paperwork. So we will not know if F.B.'s conditional status removal was approved and he will not receive his new updated resident card for up to 1 year....

I asked our lawyer what happens if it takes Immigration longer than 1 year to process our paperwork and she said in that case his status would be extended but he would have to go to a USCIS center with his I-797 notice and his passport to have it stamped for an addtional year.

Immigration is just so complicated. I thought we were almost done and had no idea it could take 8 months to 1 year to receive his new resident card. Wow... Ugh...

NOTE: Our lawyers Peter J. Gonzales & Shanna Stanton have changed firms. They are no longer with Kahiga Tiagha. They are now with Green and Spiegel LLC, but still located in Philadelphia.

To leave off on a more positive note here is a few of our Christmas Decorations!

Our "Christmas" door. It's already green, so the bow works, lol!

These are our Christmas trees. :-)

Christmas sock monkeys! Just a few of the holidays stuffed animals I have.

Last night we brought home two little boy rats. A PEW and a Black Berkshire. We named the PEW; Remy and the Black Berk; Emile. (Ratatouille!)

Templeton and our elderly Aspen seem just fine with the new little boys. But my quiet boy Teddy is being a real Grinch to them. Hopefully he will settle down soon...