Optimistic

The company I work for is taking this week off, so I have a week in which to do all those things I never seem to get around to the rest of the time! As if I’ll actually get around to them this week too. We’ll see how far I get anyway.

Mike and I had an awesome Christmas! This is our first one where we got to wake up in our own house (rented, but still nice) and give each other gifts with our adorable and affectionate pets looking on and sometimes participating (whether you want them to help you tear open the paper or not!). That in and of itself was wonderful! But then we got to drive a whole 7 minutes up to Mike’s family’s ranch and exchange gifts and Christmas cheer with his parents, brother and his family, grandparents, and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It’s kind of amazing how much effort goes into getting presents for everyong in a family of that size, but it’s worth it! The most the merrier I think. My favorite part of Christmas is spending time with family and friends, and the exchanging of gifts - I really feel like an adult (which only happens sometimes) when I realize I’m much more excited about seeing people’s faces when they open their gifts from me than I am about opening mine!

One of my favorite Christmas moments occurred at my parents’ house, where we celebrated Christmas with them the day before. My dad, grandma, and Mike and I all chipped to get my mom a really neat telescope! She’s super interested in astronomy stuff and likes to do things like got outside in the freezing cold in the deepest dark of night to find stars and galaxies and etc. The funnest part of giving her a telescope was that she had NO idea that she was getting it! She had very practical and boring things on her Christmas list, like flannel pj’s, and measuring cups. So we she tore off the paper and saw the outside of the box, her first response was “i wonder where you guys found a telescope box to put my present in”. In my family we take great pride in finding the most unlikely boxes to put presents in; one year we stuck a gift card inside an enormous box filled with paper and rocks. So anyway, my mom was, needless to say, EXTREMELY surprised! And very happy. I love Christmas surprises!

Now that Christmas is over, and it’s a week till New Year’s (not nearly so much of a fun holiday really) I’m going to use this week for productive pursuits. Oh by the way, it’s Mike’s birthday on January 2nd, in case anyone would like to wish him a Happy Birthday! He’s getting old…. So on my list:

Stock up on frozen food: I’m not going to buy prepackaged stuff, rather, I’m going to make large batches of stuff like lasagna, enchiladas, and pasta and freeze them in individual containers so I can have tons of yummy stuff for lunches and those times when we’re too tired,/lazy/uninspired to cook dinner (which happens so rarely, right…).

Exercise more: I’m going to take Ampersand for long walks everyday, which I haven’t been able to do when working because it’s dark when I leave in the morning and when I get home. I’ve also TiVo’d a yoga show! Should be fun. Although I think I’m fooling myself there a bit because I already have a great yoga DVD sitting around holding down shelves and collecting dust.

House beautifying: There are still pictures and posters that we haven’t put up in our rental house, and we’ve been here for over two months. Also, lots of things I could organize and put away. I’m not holding my breath on this one though - there’s a reason it’s third on my list

Read! I’m going to the library today, and once I pay my overdue fines I’ll see if I can convince them that they should let me check out more books!

Bills: sigh, need to send those out. Blech. I’ve got almost all of them automatically withdrawn though, so it’s not too bad!

Correspondence: I have been so bad about sending postcards and emails and letters to people. I keep telling everyone to just check out my blog, but someof them live in the dark ages and some of them seem to like “personal” notes for some reason.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

p.s. All you lazy blog people need to get a move on. It’s hard for me to procrastinate doing things on my list when I don’t have lots of new blog posts to read!