Wednesday, December 30, 2009

2009 - Recap

Well, tomorrow we leave and head off to good ol' Macon. We are spending our New Year's Eve with some great friends that live down there. With that being said, I most likely won't get to do a blog post so here it is (I'm pretty sure there is a way to schedule a post to publish at a date in the future, but I don't know how to do that).

I want to note a few things (mostly random) that happened in 2009 that I will most likely forget one day. I'm hoping that this will allow us to look back and see how our lives have changed.

January: Ringing in 2009 at Tommy's lake house. Attending various Gym Dog meets.

February: Valentine's Day at Wildfire. Started my blog!

March: I got glasses...a sign of aging. ugh. Long weekend in Asheville and saw the Jeff Dunham show.

April: Mike sold his car - one car payment gone. Woo Hoo!

May: Mauri's bachelorette party weekend in Florida. Mauri's wedding. Meredith's wedding. Visiting family in Florida. (May was by far our busiest month this year)

June: Mike/Jess's wedding. Recovering from all the traveling mentioned from May.

July: Peachtree Road Race. Got new furniture for our living room.

August: Nothing comes to mind except a lot of work. It was year end at my old job.

September: Georgia football. Started a new job.

October: Celebrated one year of marriage. Vacationed in San Francisco. Brittney's wedding.

November: Paid my car off - no more car payments for our house!

December: Tacky sweater Christmas party at Ashley's. Got a new TV for the living room. Natalie, Josh and Madalyn visiting for almost the whole month!

Cheers to 2009! It was a great year but I'm looking forward to 2010!

I'm planning to do another post for my 2010 goals...just to make them public. Because, lets face it, if I don't make them public then I will slack and another year will go by and I won't have accomplished anything.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Packing up Christmas

Well, I have officially packed up Christmas. It makes me sad to think that I won't be able to sit on the sofa and read by the Christmas tree lights. I loved our tree this year and I'm sad to see it go. Until we can find a place to dump our tree, I'm leaving the lights and angel on it. And the tree skirt. Everything else is boxed up. bye bye birdies. :(

But, on a happy note. I got some great ornament box organizer thingies from Bed Bath & Beyond and they are fantastic! Everything is neatly in its own little box. I'm sure I will get lots of joy out of this next year when I have to dig out all the ornaments!

AND............Gooooooo Dawgs! :-D (thank goodness Joe Cox is outta here. And Willie too. HA!)

ps - did anyone notice that kid Sanders Cummings? He was the one who sat at our table this year at the UGA Gala.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Tour de Georgia - Christmas 2009 edition

I'm a day late but....MERRY CHRISTMAS! :)

It seems like yesterday that we were making our rounds for Thanksgiving. We always make it to all three houses for Christmas. I can't imagine not seeing everyone.

Like every year we started out at my Mom's house on Christmas Eve. We had delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and some goood red wine. Then, after dinner, we opened gifts. We left my Mom's house around 10:30 and headed to church. Yes, that's right. We battled the AWFUL rain and wind to go to Midnight Mass. When we finally got home it was almost 1:30! I was completely zonked out!

Christmas morning came bright and early when the alarm went off at 7am. We made some coffee, loaded up the rest of the presents and headed down to the in-laws' house. We spent the morning spending some quality time with family, telling stories and laughing ALOT...because that's just what we do. :) After exchanging some gifts we said our goodbyes, doled out hugs, said "Merry Christmas" and then jumped into the car to make the 95 mile trek to Athens.

Apparently, I did not get enough sleep the previous night because I completely fell asleep in the car. Which, is something I NEVER do. My loving husband, thought it would be funny to snap a picture of me, from his camera phone. I guess I didn't know just how tired I was because it was a VERY embarrassing picture of me with my head tilted back and my mouth wide open. The kind of open where you hope there's no creepy crawly bugs around because they would surely find that warm opening and....GAG! I deleted it immediately.

We spent a few hours relaxing, visiting and a few more presents were exchanged before we jumped back into the car (again!) and came home to sleep in our bed.

So there you have it...Tour de Georgia (approximately 160 miles). It was worth every mile. Our Christmas was wonderful. :)

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

December Madness!

Dear December,

Please slow down. You are going by too fast. I haven't had time to buy Christmas presents for my family yet; and Christmas is NEXT WEEK!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously,
Michelle

I really hope that everyone else is behind in Christmas shopping. All of my blog friends have reported that they are finished, so I'm starting to get worried. I have no idea how this month got so packed with activities. If we're not running to a friend's Christmas party, we're going to a football banquet, or a family Christmas lunch/dinner, or I'm hosting a baby shower (which was sooo much fun) or trying to stalk my best friend who is in town and see her baby, or.....a thousand other things.

So far I've been shopping on my lunch hour...which usually leads to the following due to heavy traffic around Perimeter Mall: 20 minutes to get in my car at my office, drive, fight for a parking space and get into the mall. 10 minutes to find what I'm looking for and pay. Heaven forbid, I have to make a hard decision like "should I get her the blue one or the green one? Blue one or green one?" because I am the WORST decision maker when in a time crunch. Then it's another 30 minutes to get back to the office.

When I was young I use to think my Mom was crazy for saying "I wish there were more hours in the day" but now, I get it.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas Tree(s)

This year we have two trees, which is a first for us. We decided that we wanted a more 'formal' tree for our living room. It was less than 30 mins after making that decision we ended up walking out of Wal-mart with a buggy full of new ornaments, lights, angel and tree skirt. We love how it turned out.
I begged Mike for these little glittery birds. He finally gave in and said I could get four. So I quickly grabbed them before he changed his mind. I got two gold ones and two brown ones. They are my favorite part of our Christmas tree. Although, for some reason they tend to turn and face the middle of the tree....so that you can only see their feathery tails. When they do that they kind of look like squirels. :-/
I guess I should also mention that the day before we pulled out all of the Christmas decorations we had cleaned our house from top to bottom. I mean, it was spotless! The fans were cleaned. The blinds were cleaned. Everything was either windexed, dusted or thrown away. We even re-organized the hall closet. So when I started putting those lovely glittery gold sticks and glittery birds and glittery ornaments all over the tree, glitter was everywhere. I thought Mike was going to kill me. And...even though its been two whole weeks since this all went on, I still catch specks of glitter here and there.
This is our second tree. It's very Charlie Brown-ish. My Mom gave me this artifical tree when I was in college and it was perfect for an apartment. So, this year I decided that I would put the smaller tree in our foyer. I love it when you drive by houses and you can see Christmas trees in the windows or doors.

Since we got all new ornaments for the living room tree, all of our 'normal' ornaments are on the tree in the foyer. These ornamaents consist of hand-me-downs, gifts, and a few vacation ornaments. The San Francisco ornament is our newest addition. :)

I hope to snag a few smaller Christmas trees after Christmas. I really would like to get one for our Master bedroom next year...and maybe a tiny one to put in a bathroom...or maybe a kids room/nursery one day. :)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

20 Questions

I've seen the following 20 questions on several blogs so I figured I'd hop on the bandwagon and answer them to!

1. Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot Chocolate...I haven't ever had eggnog. So, therefore, I do not like it. HA!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? Santa wraps the presents but when I was a little girl, he left them unwrapped and ready for me to tear open.

3. Colored lights or white? White lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope, but I should. I love to kiss (mike that is).

5. When do you decorate for Christmas? Usually a few days after Thanksgiving.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish, excluding dessert? Turkey. I love a good turkey. Side dish would either be mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole or mac-n-cheese.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? Waking up and running to see if Santa came and then running to wake up my parents.

8. When and how, did you learn the truth about Santa? Hmmm, I don't know if it was ever really confirmed. I got a bean bag once and it had 'soot' on it from where Santa had to shove it down the fireplace. So, I'm still a believe because I KNOW my Mom didn't shove that big ole bean bag down the fireplace.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? This year is the first year that we have 2 Christmas trees. The one in our living room is a real tree and this year we decided that we would have a 'formal/decorative' tree. The color scheme is brown, bronze, gold, champagne and some glittery ones too. The smaller tree is in our foyer and is decorated with all of our other ornaments - like the ones we got as wedding gifts, places that we've visited or ones that were on last years Christmas gifts.

11. Snow. Love it or hate it? Love it. Love it. Love it.

12. Can you ice skate? I'm not sure. I've never had ice skates on my feet. But, if its anything like roller skating...that would be a big fat NO! Maybe Mike could teach me...I hear he has mad roller skating skills. ;)

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? No way. There have been a gazillion favorite gifts. You see, this is what happens when you are a spoiled child. All of your gifts are your favorite.

14. What is the most important thing about the holidays to you? Spending time with my family.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? My great-grandmother, Maw-maw's pound cake. It is delicious. If not that then a chocolate pie thingy my mom makes...but hasn't made in a while. (hint hint, mom)

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Christmas Eve with my Mom's side of the family. This tradition has been going for as long as I can remember.

17. What tops your tree? An angel!

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Tis better to give than to receive!

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. I'm pretty sure that's the only one I know all the words to (that are the correct words).

20. Candy canes. Yuck or yum? Yum.