Anxious!

It is the Eve of Christmas Eve! This year has been a bit different for me. Normally I would be home in WA by now, waiting for Santa to arrive at my parent's house. But this year, all my family is travelling to the East to spend Christmas together at Julie's house in WV! That means that I 'get' to work all the way up to Christmas Eve this year. It's been rough the last several working days. Partly because it doesn't feel like the holidays if I'm working, and partly because my co-worker travelled to the Dominican Republic so I am in the office by myself. While it is normally VERY quiet around here during the holidays, this year is different. AARP has been buzzing with activity, which means a lot more work for me and my little company. Budgets have been cut, people have been let go, temporary labor requests have been more closely monitored. So it seems as if I haven't been able to be very cheery because of the busy, hectic work load.


BUT!


Tomorrow will come. I get to pick my parents up at the airport in the morning and we will meet everybody up in WV for an awesome Christmas!! That is - if Seattle airport doesn't get shut-down. Why did it never snow that much when I lived there? Hopefully there won't be any problems getting Mom & Dad out here.

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Last week my attempt to get friends to go see the DC trees proved about half successful. Trav and Scott were able to attend with me and I was so glad! We had a nice hot Italian dinner before we headed out in the cold to see the trees. Good company and good fun!

Me with the Capitol and Capitol Tree

Me, The Wasington State Tree and the Washington Monument in the background.

Travis and the National Tree

Scott and the National Tree

(Scott has lived here 9 years and never seen this!!)

Me and the National Tree

The 3 of us being giddy

Christmas White House

I added snow to my blog! I think it's fun to watch it fall. :)

Yay for Christmas!

I am a giddy little girl. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

This weekend I went to NYC with my sister, Julie. I was supposed to go with a few of my friends, but they all bailed last weekend. I was sad because I had been looking forward to this trip for many weeks! I've wanted to see Christmas in NYC for years and since this year I'm not traveling home for Christmas, I could actually do it. Anyway, luckily Julie agreed to come and it was SO much fun! She had never been to New York so it was extra exciting for her. I was glad that she came along because I knew that she would have the same exciting reactions as I would to everything.

Richard was kind enough to let us stay with him, so all we had to pay for was our transportation (and lunch on Saturday). It was the cheapest trip to NYC I've ever taken! Thanks Richard!

Here are some fun pictures from our trip:

Me & Julie in Times Square

Julie trying her best to squeeze some chocolate onto my tongue..

Me & Julie in front of some cool giant ornaments

View of Saks 5th Ave from Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Tree!

Another view

Julie and the toy soldier

Me and the toy soldier

Richard and the lady toy soldier

Rockefeller skate rink

Me & Julie with a REAL toy soldier in front of FAO Schwartz

So now I am REALLY in the Christmas spirit! I'm so excited for our whole family to be together this year. It has been 10 years or more since we have all been together. I've also found myself expressing my excitement by migrating toward the kitchen more and more to bake some Christmas goodies! This is a new thing for me, but I sure am enjoying it! I've made mini pumpkin pies, brownies with candy cane Hershey kisses, molasses cookies, & sugar cookies with homemade frosting. This week I will be making some peanut butter white chocolate yumminess. This is my bribe to get my friends to go see the DC trees with me this week! The more Christmas the better, I say!

Yeah, I know...

So a few of you have let me know that since I changed the background to my blog, my box of links to other blogs was deleted. Yes. It's true. When I changed the background, all my little gadgets got deleted. So that was a bit annoying. I've quickly added a blogroll on my page for those of you who access other blogs through my blog. There you go. You're welcome. :) Let me know if I'm missing one that you normally click on.

Stay tuned for another post about how I've gotten in the Christmas spirit. (Spoiler: more baking -gasp!- and a trip to NYC!)

Silly Humans

This week at work has been fairly slow, which has been awesome! I've been sick with a cold all week, the worst of it manifesting itself yesterday. I could barely hold my head up through work and when I got home, I crashed on the couch and did not get off of it for 4 hours. I kept thinking about eating something for dinner, but I didn't have the energy to get up and go to the kitchen. I sneezed so much that I made my back sore. I couldn't move without wincing. Finally I convinced myself to move to my bed, before which I popped 4 Ibuprofens for my super-sore back and a Sudafed for my cold. This morning I felt a bit better, so hopefully I'm on the up and up.

Anyway, so since this week has been slow, I've been surfing around the internet a lot. I ended up reading Midnight Sun - which was awesome! - and have been doing my best not to do any online shopping. Today I decided to go to The Onion online. I always get a good laugh out of the newspaper, and decided I should check the website more often. Well, one article caught my eye and reminded me of my road trip with Richard down to Tami's house for Thanksgiving. Read it (click HERE!), have a laugh, and then continue on with my post.....

Of course the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a heavy traffic day. After picking Richard up from the Greyhound station in DC a few hours earlier, we headed down I-495. Everything was going alright until we connected up with I-95. Dead stop. Serious. Nobody was moving. Just a parking lot. I started feeling really thirsty at this point and wished that I had brought my water bottle with me. Then as time went on, I really wanted a slurpee. Mmmmm. A nice cold cherry slurpee sliding down my dry and parched throat. I HAD to have one. I started looking at the exit signs for a 7-11. I saw several, but didn't want to get off the freeway and then have to re-merge in with the very slow-moving traffic. 60 miles and 3.5 hours later, we finally got up to the speed limit and traffic cleared out. Now I could really get my slurpee!

I kept my eyes peeled and found another sign, but it was the same exit as Kings Dominion. No way am I getting off at that exit. That is too out of the way. So we travel on. Richard and I would be talking about random things, and I would just interrupt and blurt, "Seven Eleven!" and point to a sign. Serious ADD. The next 7-11 notification was right before merging on to I-295, so I decided to just wait for the next one. The next one came, but I couldn't get over fast enough to make the exit. Another came a long, but it was right before the merge on to I-64. So I waited again. The next one looked like it was an exit on to another highway, and I hate those exits; no easy way back to the freeway. The next one seemed like it must have been 5 miles off the exit, because I couldn't see any civilization off the side of the freeway. A no-go on that one. So by the time another 7-11 sign came around, I decided it just wasn't worth it since we were so close to our destination. I never did satisfy my craving.

Gotta love the internal debates you have with yourself. I don't like telling myself 'no', but it's good to practice patience and not give in to my every whim. I should apply this to online shopping and eating more frequently.