It's looking better...

The party planning is looking good. John has some good ideas for entertainment, and I made these and passed them out to our family at a party tonight.

Oh my goodness.

We are hosting a New Year's Eve party.

The house is a disaster from Christmas.

I've gained about 5 pounds this Christmas season.

The party is Sunday.

I have to work Friday and Saturday!

I need help!

Merry Christmas!

Lots of Christmas celebrations this weekend! We started off leaving for Indiana Friday night after work for the Saturday afternoon celebration with grandparents, aunts uncles, and baby cousins.

We got home late Saturday night, and I did some last minute shopping. Sunday we spent shopping (yes, more!) and wrapping gifts. We had our usual Christmas Eve with the Murrays at Kelly's house. We bought a gift for Chris and Christine, and they bought for us...this is totally crazy, but we got each other the same thing. Bar signs, from the same company! Totally weird. We love our Murray's Irish Pub sign!



After Midnight Mass, we drove to Aunt Karen and Uncle Doug's to spend Christmas with them and my mom and cousins. We had a great Christmas morning! Our family is so generous! We finally got to open our computer, which I'm using right now to blog! My mom gave me Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 which I can't wait to use! She also got me a Photo CD organizing system, which I totally need! She also gave me a runner's training journal, so I guess I had better keep running! She gave John and I a fire pit for the backyard, something we have been wanting for a long time. My cousin Katie gave us way to much stuff, but it was all really cool stuff from her year in Italy. My Aunt Karen and Uncle Doug got us a 6 game package for the Tigers next year! It is such a great gift...the 6 teams are the best in the MLB (well, besides the Tigers, of course)! We have tickets for games against the Yankees, the Mets, the Cardinals, the White Sox, The Twins, and the Red Sox! We are very excited! We were told to toast them at each game...that won't be a problem at all!

John got this great picture of me and Jillian watching a Barbie movie during a break from gift opening. (Yes, we take a break. There are a LOT of gifts to open!)




Next challenge...we need plans for New Year's Eve!

It's always interesting....

Christmas at John's Grandma Anderson's house...never a dull moment!

 

 

 

 

 

In other news...
We are still running. We ran 2 miles in 21 minutes tonight. I think that's pretty good for almost 30 and out of shape.

The Tigers signed Bonderman for 4 more years. Is it baseball season yet?

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel...

On Saturday, John and I went to the Ferndale ice festival. It's not much, just little ice scuptures outside of each business down 9 Mile. It's a nice walk at least. It's fun to see what each place decides to have carved for them. The BEST one this year, or any year, was outside of Affirmations, the not yet built Gay and Lesbian Community Center. For those of you that aren't familiar with Ferndale, we have a very large gay community. Here is their sculpture. If you can't read it, refer to my title today.


I won't say much about last year, except that we were really lacking in the Christmas spirit as far as decorating goes...and we hadn't started yet this year. We string popcorn and cranberries for our tree garland, and that is quite a job, so we procrastinate. We decided to go ahead and get started.


I've been saying that we would never again get a real Christmas tree, and my mom gave us her fake tree...but it's HUGE. So, for some unknown crazy reason, we decided to get a real tree. A little one. I LOVE it. It's so perfect for our little house. When John reads this he will say "Our house is NOT little! Anyway, our little tree is perfect for our house! I am so happy with it! We decorated late into the night, until we were finished. We had a fire going, and Christmas music playing...well, kind of, it's a Jimmy Buffett Christmas CD, and I love Jimmy, but "Ho Ho Ho and a bottle of rum?" Catchy little tune, but different, that's for sure.





On an unrelated note...I ran 2 miles tonight! I've become a lazy slug since I quit swimming after college...so I decided since I'm almost 30, and I know what happens when people don't exercise as they get older, I would start. My goal was 1 mile, and when I got to the .5 mile mark, I decided to go for 2 instead. I have never been a good runner, but when I was swimming, I could run whatever the coach told me to, whether it be 2 miles, or 6 miles, at the drop of a hat, so I went for 2 today. We will see if I keep this up. I figured blogging about it would give me some accountability!

We'll see.

Big Decisions

As a lot of you know, John and I have been trying to decide what to get ourselves for Christmas. We wanted to get something together, like a TV, stove, refrigerator, a computer, or a Caribbean cruise. We narrowed it down to a computer, or a cruise.

A lot of you also know that I am terrible with decisions. Basically I'm incapable of making them. It's hard enough for me to decide what I want for dinner, much less if we should get a computer or a cruise for Christmas!!

So, I asked everyone I know for their opinion. Ok, not everyone. But I tried. A few people choose the computer, and most everyone picked the cruise. Which, I liked, because I was leaning towards the cruise.

We bought our Christmas gift last night.



Don't even ask me how we came to this decision, I still don't know. But, it is going to be a super fabulous computer, and VERY fast. And, it has a 20 inch flat screen monitor. Maybe I can actually edit photos on this thing without is yelling at me that it can't handle this!

I am very sad about the cruise, but we haven't completely ruled it out yet...February is a ways off still...