Hi Connie!! Sounds like you have the holiday scrambles like me! We stay home, ALWAYS, for Christmas and do our family gift giving and dinner on Christmas Eve!We will be having Taco Salad, Broccoli Cheese Soup, Chicken wings and all sorts of holiday breads and peppermint bark and some wonderful chocolate truffles we get from Sam's Club! I do decorating, inside BIG TIME! The only thing I didn't do as per usual is the big tree in the family room. I've gone to a table top tree, which is still nice but I have trees all over of various sizes, dining room, kitchen, eat-in area, bedroom and several in each room and lots of evergreen garland, laden with red balls, plaid bows, gold bows, berries, fruit, etc.! I have every window and our fire place mantel draped in the garland with lights! I also have Dicken's villages and other brand villages all over--every room sporting a community! I've been collecting the houses forever, it seems! Front and center in our bay window is an Italian-made nativity set my mother got for me to use when I was Sunday School superintendent for the primary grades at our church when I was 20 yrs. old. So, that tells you it's about 40+ yrs. old! It's so beautiful, with the standing upright figures about 10" tall! I have Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus in the manger! He doesn't show up, though, till Christmas! He's hidden for the grandchildren to try and find! I have a couple of sheep, two shepherds, a bull, donkey, camel, and the wisemen, which have to reside across the room since they really didn't show up till Jesus was about 2 yrs. old--so they're making their way slowly around the room and an angel and the wooden stable! So, this year, we are doing a very non-traditional meal, one that requires little work and little clean as per the request of the family!!! Merry Christmas, Connie and all and I hope you get a chance to read the links when things settle down! :o) I think you will find them very interesing!

It's actually pretty simple. The long-term average temperature changes that have been tracked correlate well with the CO2 changes. On top of that, models of how the Earth's atmosphere responds to CO2 burden are straightforward, and predict the temperature change that is seen. So it's pretty clear that CO2 plays a major role. If you argue with that, then you argue with atmospheric equilibrium models that have been proven over decades. It's a lot of computation, but the physical principles are actually pretty simple. Now, we can argue about what has caused the CO2 increase. Of course, that's not what this topic is about, and it makes little sense to change the topic. By the way, the references quoted above are from the astute-sounding "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" (NIPCC). Don't be fooled. This group used to call itself the "Heartland Institute", and decided to change it's name to make it sound more auspicious, like a legitimate alternate authority to the established "International Panel on Climate Change" (IPCC), which is a real scientific body involving hundreds of scientists and think tanks. I won't start any arguments, but please don't hesitate to look up the Heartland Institute if you have any inclination to take their stuff seriously. They are, by the way, well funded by Exxon-Mobil and the Koch brothers.

Thanks everyone! It really makes the kitchen so much more bright & enjoyable! @wallycat, no blue, but there are 6 different shades of brown in the flooring... it really helps hide the dirt & with living on a farm that makes a big difference! We are lucky enough to have family that has done construction & they helped with the countertop & sink... so I guess I should add the price of supper & a case of beer to the total, lol!

Wanted to share what I've found out as well as to thank all these wonderful responses! So many of you indicate that ATMs seem to be the way to go for cash, so that's what we'll do for pocket money. We have discovered that we need to put down a deposit for lodging and an outing we've planned. That means that before we travel, we have to pay using a CC. I have discovered this. Credit cards issued through credit unions don't sock users with a 3% foreign exchange fee. They pass on the 1% that they are charged by VS & MC, but don't tack on the extra 2% that most banks add, for the total of 3%. Hooray for credit unions! DH is a member of one that issues CCs. (The two I belong to only have savings accounts and simple loans -- they don't even offer checking!) So we will apply for the CU CC -- to be used for overseas transactions! We are cautious/intentional about using CCs and pay our entire balances every month.