Holiday Happenings

It's been awhile since I've blogged; the holiday season sort of bulldozed us with moving to a new place, family and friend commitments, and other busy fun. It was a good month and a half, but I'm glad to be able to take life a little slower now. I would include pictures with my rambling, but our internet has been down with no real hope from the company (they are really starting to annoy me), so pictures will have to wait. I hope you bear with me though!

Thanksgiving was spent in the San Diego area with Cooper's parents and family. We had a really nice time while we were there, enjoying the mild weather. California really has that going for it. We attended a church service with Cooper's parents on Thanksgiving day, and then had a mid-afternoon meal with them and his brother Chad and his wife, Sarah. We spent the next day touring around the beautiful beach areas with Chad and Sarah, having good sandwiches at a little place right near the coast and then walking around on the piers. I was particularly fascinated by the old ship that was docked there and took far too many pictures. I just like old stuff, I guess. We also walked around on the beach where there were some tide pools, just slow hang-out time that we don't get much of. Another blessing we got was the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with our friends Ross and Jessica, who moved to the L.A. area this past fall and we have missed our regular game/dinner nights with them. They met us at Dana Point and we had a  nice catch-up chat over frozen yogurt (by the way, I'm officially a fan of these self-serve frozen yogurt places that are popping up. You get to pick your flavor and toppings and give yourself just the portion you want, which means I spend maybe $2 on the treat. Right on!) We also made a thrift store run (California thrift stores are better than ours), landed some nice lamps to replace the cheap garage sale ones that were quickly going downhill that we had before, but the trip turned into a car break down the day before we left. Praise the Lord, we found a mechanic that happened to be open on a Saturday on a holiday weekend, and we were set to leave on schedule as planned. Cooper's Dad helped us out a lot in getting us a tow and paying for the repair. We are certainly blessed with the family we have!

The weekend before Christmas, we moved out of our old tiny cramped apartment into a new not-so-cramped-with-lots-of-storage townhouse! I'm so happy with our new place! The move went off without a hitch; my parents helped, as well as our friends Blake, John, Alia, and Cooper's brother Caleb, so everything went really fast. The boys lifted all the heavy stuff, Alia got the rest, Caleb used his engineering skills to pack the truck just right, and my Mom and I were freed up to clean the apartment as everything got moved out. We were done by four in the afternoon! The one and only downside of our new place is that it is not close to the direct bus line to campus, so Cooper is now driving me to work (I'm boycotting NAU's ridiculous permit prices and lack of parking). But otherwise, I'm loving it and looking forward to getting everything organized. We even have a washer and drier inside the new place which wasn't something we were expecting. Praise the Lord!

Christmas Adam was spent with the Young/Vaughan/Lanting clan at the Kachina house. We had a nice dinner, read the Christmas story, sang carols, opened a couple gifts, and generally enjoyed each other's company. Kale'a took me for a lengthy walk around the house (me bent at the waist, holding her hands, while she toddled happily along; I'm crazy about my niece!), Peter beat me solidly at chess, and Anne had fun looking at Cooper's fancy touch phone. I was not brave enough to try eggnog and I don't imagine I ever will be (sorry Grace!). Christmas Eve we spent attempting to organize our apartment and running last minute errands, and then went to a Christmas Eve service at Christ Church of Flagstaff, where my brother and his wife attend. We then went to my sister-in-law's sister's house for dinner and visiting, and were entertained by the antics of her young nieces, Olivia and Claire. Christmas day we went to church (low turn-out, which was sad), then went to my parents' house, were we lounged around, opened gifts, tried to keep the dogs from getting into too much trouble, and ate a yummy dinner provided by my amazing Mommy.

On the 27th, we got up at the crack of dawn and headed to Phoenix to fly out to Baltimore with my parents to see my extended family. We barely caught the flight on time, which made the airport kind of stressful. Airports stress me out to begin with, and being rushed didn't help. Flying was smooth from there though, and I officially appreciate the flight attendants on Southwest; they made all sorts of jokes during their safety lecture, like, "If you would like to smoke, we have a smoking section the wings, where we will also show the feature film, 'Gone with the Wind'" and "If the cabin pressure drops, stop screaming, let go of the passenger next to you, and pull down on the oxygen masks...". Good times. The trip was generally a lot of driving around to get to various people and sitting around talking to various people, but highlights included a visit to Fort McHenry, where a battle was fought that inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner, lunch with my cousin Erin who is four years younger than me and her new husband, Ben (they are both professional musicians and love Jesus so it was delightful to sit and chat with them), a walk around my childhood favorite, Rehoboth Beach on New Years, a New Years party family get-together, and thanking God my sick Grandma made it to one more year and seeing her with my mom's step-siblings. All in all, I love my family, am grateful for them, and always leave wishing we lived closer.

I just celebrated my birthday yesterday (26...what a boring age to turn). It was a lovely day, filled with not working (I took the day off), watching Pride and Prejudice (I did this before Cooper woke up so he wouldn't make fun of me too much), having a nice slow cup of morning coffee, and then we drove out to go buy a kitty! We ended up getting her from the Humane Society. Yes, we now have a new addition to our family of the feline variety. She came with the name Tuna but we thought that was horribly generic and boring so after some deliberation we renamed her Narnia. She's kind of tortoise shell in color with a black face, and she's very lovey dovey, which is exactly the kind of cat I wanted. For additional birthday celebrations, we went to my favorite restaurant, Oreganos, and then we went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which was really good. So it was a fantastic day, especially spending it with the bestest hubby in the world. :-)

I'm excited to see what God will do with us in the year to come. It's never dull.