In this episode of Girls Night In we discussed the most wonderful time of the year; or at least we hope it is. We listed off our favorite holiday tunes and chatted about our favorite Christmas movies. Then we got to the real turkey and mashed potatoes of the episode and told our two favorite memories or traditions. Things got rather sweet, I’m not going to lie to you.

Don’t forget to follow what Santa is up to at http://www.twitter.com/SantaClaus He’ll be tweeting from his smart phone throughout Christmas Eve to tell us where he’s at during present delivery. He also has his own website where he’ll email you daily updates on the happenings at the North Pole. You might even get a recipe or two from Mrs. Claus.

What If
We can’t possibly do an episode without a couple What if questions.
1. What if Santa were real and he really did know when you were sleeping and know when you’re awake and bad or good? Would you do anything differently?
2. What if a millionaire came to you and said you had $1,000,000 to buy anyone anywhere any gift you wanted? What would it be and who would you buy for? The only exception is you couldn’t buy anything for yourself.

Rachel mentioned the One Laptop Per Child campaign. The way the policy will be working through December 31, 2007 is “Get One, Give One”. A limited-time program in which you donate one laptop to be sent to a child in the developing world and you receive one laptop in recognition of your donation. Find out more about this program, the laptops and how to help by visiting the website.

What’s Coming Up?
We will return to our regular live schedule Wednesday, January 9 at 9PM EDT, 8PM CDT, 7PM MDT, 6PM PDT, 4PM Hawaii time. We will be discussing Maggie’s topic of choice, cheating. She wants to know what we and you listeners have cheated at in our lives! And no, cheating at podcast questions do not count. She’d like to hear about one event of cheating from your life while you’ll hear about two from each of the co-hosts. Call in your cheating ways to 206-203-4308, email us hello@girlsnightinpodcast.com or join us live on TalkShoe!

The What If questions will be:
1. What if you could cheat at something and never get caught, what would it be?
2. What if you could cheat at something you do every day, what would it be?

The episode to follow Maggie’s cheating will be a movie review and Rachel will be taking the reins once more. We will be discussing her movie pick Sense and Sensibility. We realize it’s a long time away but January 23 will be here before you know it.
We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas or Holiday of their choice and we’ll see you all in the New Year! Have fun and stay safe.

Listen above or download by right clicking and saving here.

Time always goes by so fast this time of year. It seems like 2 weeks ago was Labor Day but next week is Christmas already. It’s hard to stop and smell the roses, as if there are any in bloom in December in Wisconsin. I wrote my Christmas letter this past weekend and I came to realize the thing that I am most thankful for this year, other than Marty of course. You see I’ve struggled with Asthma since Jr High. It was never that bad when I was younger, in fact I used to go to bars in college on the weekends. Then in October of 2004 I came down with pneumonia which reeked havoc on my lungs. I ended up catching cold after cold. I ended up being sick for 7 months straight, save for literally 3 days, and had a total of 9 colds. It was the longest and shortest time of my life because I slept, a lot. Since then I’ve struggled with the health of my lungs, often getting ill and repeating the several colds in a row. This past March I came down with another very bad cold and ended up getting to the point where I was having multiple asthma attacks a day and using my inhaler between 12-15 times a day. After many trips to the doctor she decided to try me on a stronger steriod, preventive inhaler called Advair. A few days later I went to a specialist who told me that like most asthmatics when not having an attack I actually have almost super human lung capacity. He then went on to tell me that if I’m not struggling with asthma at night, then it’s under control. I left his office crying. He said that cigarette smoke (one of my main triggers) is easy to avoid now days. Then why had I had an attack from smoke driving in my car with the windows up that very morning? I was mad and at a loss as to what to do. Over the next few days I tried to decide what to do when something miraculous happened. I was once again in my car, windows down this time, and the person in the car in front of me was smoking and I didn’t have an attack. It had been about 2 weeks since I had started on Advair. Since that time I am attack free most days. I even got a cold in October and figured I’d be sick for 3-6 months, which had become the norm and I was only sick for 10 days! I was so happy I could have cried. My lungs aren’t perfect, neither is my immune system but life is so much better and so much sweeter. So that’s the best thing that’s happened to me this year.

Hello everyone. I am hoping that everyone is having a great holiday season. I am using this forum to write my Christmas letter. I love Christmas, but I have never written a Christmas letter before. I think that I am supposed to tell everyone all about my year and yet write it so that everything sounds better than it actually was. I am going to spare you, and myself, that part. I will just tell it like it was.

Before I do that though, I want to give a preview of the show coming out next week. One topic we discuss is Christmas memories. I saved this one for the blog. I am hoping that this will also help you all understand why we chose to adopt a family for Christmas. I grew up with a single mom. My dad was never really in the picture for me. We lived in California and he lived in Illinois. My mom worked more than 40 hour work weeks as an OR nurse. In addition to the 40 hours she often took call on nights as weekends. When she got called in, which was often, she would pull 12-14 hour days or work 6 days straight. She did all of that to provide for us and yet times were often tight. I remember going without things a lot, but it never really occurred to me to mind. I think it was because we had so much fun anyway. By the time I was in high school my brother and sister had moved out and I got to spend a ton of time with her. Christmas was the one time of year that I can say without a doubt that I wanted for nothing. I cannot remember a single thing that I really wanted that was not given to me at Christmas. It was the one time of year that she let herself spoil us. As a mom now, I can only imagine how hard it must have been to say no at other times. It was always a magical time for us. My mom acted more like a child than any of us during this season. I loved seeing her so happy. When I was in junior high she started a tradition with me that I hold dear. We went to the mall to shop and we saw a tree covered in hand made ornaments. When we looked closer we realized that it each ornament had been made by a child who would not be getting any gifts without help from others. We quickly struck a deal that I would give up a gift of mine so that we could buy one of these kids a toy. The kids had said what they wished for. We found a child asking for a watch. Such a simple thing, it touched us. We went into the Disney Store and bought a Mickey Mouse watch and brought it back to the tree. We were given the ornament that the child had made. We treasured it. Every year after that we found a tree and did the same. For a while we found them easily, children in need often asked for the simplest things… one year it was school supplies (we provided those and added a Barbie as well). For whatever reason, since my mom died three years ago… I have not been able to find one of those trees full of wishes. Perhaps it was something just meant for us to do together. Now that she is gone, memories of Christmas and the joy that we found together in giving to others lives brightly in my heart. I hope to be as wonderful and as inspiring to my daughter as my mom was to me. She truly was an angel in blue jeans. I am doing what I can this year to make Christmas special for a family that finds itself in situation so familiar to me. I know how hard it was for my mom to make Christmas happen every year and yet I was never one time disappointed. Please help me, and the other girls, and donate what you can to help make a very merry Christmas for a single mom and her kids.

Okay if you are still with me after that, here is my letter. The year started off hard for me. I went through a re-structuring at work that had consultants marching around making people feel insecure in their jobs and unsure of their future in the company. I worked a lot. I would be at work by 6:30 and leave at 4:30. I had to drive an hour each way to get there and I still had to bring work home. Even with all of that work, the people I worked with and for treated the employees like they were disposable. I hated every minute that I was there. I had to enforce policy I did not believe it, get yelled at, and was overall feeling very unappreciated. When a co-worker of mine whom I received a lot of support for quit and I got screamed at quite literally by a manager in front of others… I decided to look for another job. I updated my resume that night and looked at monster.com. I saw a job that looked like a perfect fit for me. I applied there and figured I would see what happened. I had been at my job so long that part of me felt like I would NEVER escape. A week later I got a call from the company I had applied to. I went in for an interview later that week. I was hired on the spot. I gave my two weeks notice that day and have never looked back. I have no job stress anymore. I have things that bother me, but it is more about personality quirks, like those you read about here. Really, after the environment I worked in before… these mostly just make me laugh or roll my eyes. It hit me a few days ago that I am happy at work. Usually tired, always wishing I could get up and leave.. but hey it is called going to WORK, not to play. The people there are just NICE. I can’t put into words how much of a difference this has made in my life. I work less hours, commute less, have a better work environment, and I get paid more with better benefits. Pinch me please.

Aly is getting so big. I am sure you have heard her in the podcasts lately. She is a spitfire and so funny. I love being a mom. I try to make our time together as good as it can be. We do a lot of different things, like the zoo, the aquarium, fun things that we can just enjoy together. She talks non-stop and now knows all of her colors and is working on numbers and letters. She is obsessed with princesses and spends a lot of time making me take off their dresses and changing their clothes. Being a mom is more than I ever knew. I love it.

The podcast of course is wonderful. I feel so lucky that I have gotten to know not just my three great co-hosts and friends, but the listeners as well. You all are awesome and I have made some really special friends from this. Thank you all.

I guess that is it for me. Thank you for sticking with me and reading all of this. I hope you all have a wonderful season and enjoy whatever holiday you spend. Please remember to give what you can, I learned from my mom that you can often times give more than you ever knew and you can make a difference with even a small gesture. Thinking about that watch still makes my heart swell.

Merry Christmas to you all. Mom, I love you and I know that where ever you are… the brightest Christmas lights, the loudest jingle bell, the sweetest memories, they are all gifts from you.

We here at the Girls Night In podcast have adopted a family that we will be sponsoring for Christmas. We are donating all of the money that we have generated through TalkShoe to a family that will not be having a very merry Christmas without some help. We would like to invite all of our listeners to help make a merry Christmas for the family we have chosen. The family is headed by a single mom and we want to make sure that Santa visits this house. Please help if you can by clicking on the donate to PayPal button. Any amount will help. We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Written by IMDb Editors

“Benjamin Franklin Gates descends from a family of treasure-seekers who’ve all hunted for the same thing: a war chest hidden by the Founding Fathers after the Revolutionary War. Ben’s close to discovering its whereabouts, as is his competition, but the FBI is also hip to the hunt.”

Now I bet you’re asking yourself if this movie could possibly live up to her last pick, “Wet Hot American Summer”? You’ll just have to listen to find out. As per usual we ordered you to either Buy It, Rent It, Catch It On TV or Skip It.

What If?
1. If you could spend one whole night alone with anyone in history, who would you choose?
2. If you could travel back in time, where would you go?

What’s Coming Up?
Our next episode will be a pre-recorded Holiday special. You can look for that in your pod-catcher on or around December 19.

We will return to our regular live schedule Wednesday, January 9 at 9PM EDT, 8PM CDT, 7PM MDT, 6PM PDT, 4PM Hawaii time. We will be discussing Maggie’s topic of choice, cheating. She wants to know what we and you listeners have cheated at in our lives! And no, cheating at podcast questions do not count. She’d like to hear about one event of cheating from your life while you’ll hear about two from each of the co-hosts. Call in your cheating ways to 206-203-4308, email us hello@girlsnightinpodcast.com or join us live on TalkShoe!

The What If questions will be:
1. What if you could cheat at something and never get caught, what would it be?
2. What if you could cheat at something you do every day, what would it be?

The episode to follow Maggie’s cheating will be a movie review and Rachel will be taking the reins once more. We will be discussing her movie pick Sense and Sensibility. We realize it’s a long time away but January 23 will be here before you know it.

The music played tonight behind our closing segment was found through the PodSafe Music Network. The song is O Holy Night by artist Charlie Crowe.

Listen above or download by right clicking and saving here.

Everyone had quite a lot to say in this show. It was deemed necessary to split the episode into two parts so that you could listen to us in smaller, more manageable portions. This is part 2 of 2 where we pick up with your embarrassing stories and then move into the crazy What If questions.

Discussion Topic : Embarrassing Moments (Listeners Only)
Tonight our listeners really got into the sharing spirit. There were stories of farts, vomit and likely a lesson or two was learned.

What If?
Of course we a couple What If questions? Here they are.
1. November is also National Novel Writing Month, which for a number of our listeners who are participating in that, can create some life-long memories… this question was born. What if you were a published author? What would your very first best selling book be about? Share what your memory of it would be!
2.What if you had to exchange YOUR embarrassing memory with someone else who has already shared one on the show? Whose would you exchange with and why?

Contest Update
The winner of 2 movie tickets was Emily from Ohio!

What’s Coming Up?
Our next show will be held on Wednesday, December 12 we will be discussing Maggie’s movie “National Treasure” It will once again be on TalkShoe at 9pm EST, 8pm CST, 7pm MST or 6pm PST. At a quarter to the hour, the show room will open and you can dial in to listen and/or participate. All you need to do is dial 724 444 7444, enter talkcast ID 34065 and then 1 followed by the pound sign. That’s it. No membership required. However, if you ARE a TalkShoe member, please come and join the party. Have a blast with us and a number of our other listeners as we record live.

Listen above or download by right clicking and saving here.