This is Amanda, posting for my second time ever - I have been debating over what to do with my time this morning, and decided this was a good first activity! I hear that the Lord of the Rings watching festivities have started over at Headquarters - I hope they are all still awake by midnight...cuz I know that I would DEFINITELY be sleeping by about the fourth hour! Don't forget to eat, girls!
This was a wonderful Christmas season for Nathan and me. We stayed here until Christmas Eve morning and then drove up to my parents' house in Washington until the 29th. I got to enjoy the picking-up-Tawnia-at-the-airport-Christmas-song-singing adventure, while Nathan stayed at home and worked on my Christmas present...then there were all sorts of other fun things going on! We hung out during the Christmas cookie baking days (mostly just eating them...we weren't much help!), got to go caroling and hand out the delicious cookies, and then returned to open presents that we'd gotten for the family, and that they'd gotten for us. We had to open Tawnia's in the other room, and I was silly enough to blurt out what the gift was, but luckily no one in the other room heard! We didn't get to open Mindy's either - but that was very fun at my parents' house on Christmas morning!
Then we drove up to Washington, leaving about six hours later than we'd planned, arriving at my parents' house around 7:00pm to enjoy a bit of dinner and the crazy crazy dogs (and three cats!). I think we taught my brother how to play Settlers of Catan that night, and then Nathan, my brother, my dad, and I played it a time or two. Nathan won a million times til the end of the trip. I beat just him once (we were playing two player), and then my dad beat both of us. Let me tell you - he was VERY happy to have won.
Christmas morning we opened presents and that was a lot of fun - the coolest thing was that my brother wrote this poem about our family, memories, unconditional love, traditions, etc. and it made all of us cry (in a good way). It was a very good moment...he put a lot of thought and love into it. Then...we helped clean up the house for awhile and family came over around 4:00pm. It was my aunt and uncle, my cousins and their husbands. We had so much fun with them.
Later we did some exploring of Poulsbo (a cute little town by where my parents live), went to exchange some things at the mall (*shudder* I am NOT a big fan of the mall), and visited my grandpa on the way back down. All in all it was a great trip. We were happy to come back home to Oregon, though. Last night we came back over to see the family (ok ok and to do a hundred loads of laundry!), and had delicious sloppy joes, helped take down Christmas decor (sad!), and played Settlers of Zarahemla(h?) I forget if it has an "h" on the end. Anyway - that was great fun!
At home in our little apartment we had fun, too - we had two awesome advent calendars - a Lego one for Nathan, and one with cute little ornaments in it for me (I think Nathan already told you about these), and we ended up getting TWO different trees, because our first one died. We didn't realize that you had to cut the bottom off yourself (usually, as in the case of our second tree, they do it for you!), so it didn't get any water. That was very sad, but I convinced my wonderful husband to let us get another one. We went all out decorating the tree and put up other lights and garlands, and I made some really long paper chains which sort of got draped over the TV and stereo. We did stockings for each other and made each other presents. It was wonderful!
For this coming year, I have a goal of exercising more, but I think I'm going to try to make it REALLY specific...cuz vague goals seem to never work for me - so I think I'll set a fixed amount of hours of exercising I need to do each month...and if I put it off, then it will be a VERY active end of the month. Nathan and I are planning to go on a road trip in June...mostly camping - we're thinking we'll go to southern Oregon and northern California. We'll only have a week or so to go, so we don't want to spend too much time driving. Probably we'll take the vacation during the break between Nathan's spring term and his summer term.
Our plans for next school year, you ask? Well - this month is a very important month in terms of that - I'll be applying to a graduate school program at OSU in College Student Services Administration. They only accept about 18 people each year...so I'm pretty nervous...and I don't really have a plan B at this point. I should probably work on getting a plan B. So if I get accepted there, Nathan will transfer there with me, to finish up his Bachelors. Anyway - I'm not taking a class this month (Linfield has a funny little January term where people take one intense class for four weeks), but I'll be working two jobs and teaching an RA Training class. It'll be busy, but I'll still have plenty of time for working on my two biggest goals for the month - applying to grad school and making our wedding scrapbook! Oh - the two jobs are only a total of 20 hours a week, and the class is only 3 or 4 hours a week, so that's why I'll have time.
There is so much more to tell - and perhaps I'll write again with some interesting stories about neighbors - we had some VERY interesting ones, let me tell you. The house next door probably had about 8 different families in it during the 16 years we lived there! I need to go do many things today, especially if Tawnia comes over to hang out for New Years tonight. I might go get my hair cut really short again. Anyway...thank you for reading - I'll perhaps post again soon!!
No comments:
Post a Comment