First thing to report: the snow is gone!
These last couple of weeks have been so busy!!! I'm sorry that I let myself go so long in between posts. I'll try not to let this get too long but there are just so many Christmas activities to tell you about.
Thanksgiving was really lovely. I missed Steven while he was at work but I got to spend lots of time with my family. We played Apples to Apples and ate marvelous food and laughed a lot. It was fun and silly and is always one of my favorite days of the year.
On Black Friday we did NOT go shopping. No, no, no. That's never something that has interested me. We actually had a really relaxing day at home since we knew the rest of the weekend was going to be busy. On Saturday we made our way down to the Seattle Center. During Winterfest at the Center they have all sorts of random holiday activities going on all the time and on this particular evening, I noticed there was going to be singing around a bonfire with Hank Cramer! I know Hank from Winthrop. I worked for his wife, Kit, while I was there and Hank used to come to the dinner rides and sing cowboy songs for our guests. So we went and stood in the freezing cold and sang with Hank, which I really enjoyed :)
My Aunt and cousins were also there for some festive fun that evening, along with my did and his family so we got to spend a little time with them as well. After the singing, we stuck around the Center House for a swing/fox trot dance lesson and then a couple of hours of dancing. We had such a marvelous time!! I wore a twirly skirt and we tried to dance the whole time. Sometimes they played really slow songs though and we didn't really know what to do. We tried to fox trot like everyone else but as I told Steven we were just "walking and holding hands." He said it didn't matter because as long as we were moving together no one would notice. We tried our best and laughed a lot :)
We like to watch all of the other couples who are older and way better dancers than us. It's so cute that they've just been dancing together for years and years. When we were sitting during one of the songs, this older gentleman came over and said (to Steven) "Why are you sitting down? This is the only activity where she has to do exactly what you tell her!" haha! And then, after we had danced a really fun fast song another gentleman came over and told us that we looked really good out there and to keep up the good work!! It made us feel so good that he and his wife were watching us! They were so cute. They had matching red and white saddle shoes and red shirts and he had suspenders and she had a twirly skirt and they were just adorable. It was a late night and we made it an even later one by stopping at the Matador for nachos after dancing. All in all, fabulous day.
On Sunday we spent most of the day with my mom and Tara.
We played with Charlie and watched him burrow in the garland that my mom had laying in the living room (it is now outside hanging from the roof, much to Charlie's dismay). He was being really silly and kept poking his head out. Steven took this nice little photo.
Mom took all of us to see Tangled because she loves us so much. What a wonderful film!!!! Oh my goodness!! Best movie of the year! I seriously liked it even better than How to Train Your Dragon and I liked that one a LOT! It was so funny and the characters were great and the animation was really lovely and the new songs were good and I'm so jealous that Mandy Moore got to be Rapunzel's voice and I want to own a pub called "The Snuggly Duckling" and everyone should see this movie. I'm buying it as soon as it comes out on DVD. Mom also brought Frango cookies to the movie -- surprise!! So tasty. Like a super huge gormet thin mint cookie with crunched up candy canes on top. We were all very happy about that. If you've never tried these, go to Macys right now and buy some. They're expensive but you'll thank me later.
After the movie it was off to Molbaks to find a Christmas tree for Mom's house. Tara insisted that this one smelled better than the other one that we were looking at so of course we had to check it out.
We tried to take some cute photos to potentially use on our Christmas cards but it just wasn't working out. Besides, the red of my jacket totally clashes with the red of the poinsettias. It just wasn't meant to be.
Steven seemed rather impressed that it only took us about five minutes to choose a tree. I think he was secretly dreading the process and was pleasantly surprised at our efficiency.
Having a strong handsome man for a husband really changes this whole tree-putting-up process. Usually it's a long drawn-out thing where my mom and I are laughing hysterically and can't seem to get the tree to stand up straight for anything in the world and have to readjust it fourteen times and then she's still readjusting it a week later. But, Steven was able to just pick it up, put it in the stand, and hold it straight while Mom tightened the screws into place. Quick and effortless. All I had to do was stand back and document the whole thing.
Mom's house looks so great all Christmassy!!! It's cozy and festive and warm and comforting and cheerful and all the good things that Christmas decorations should be. I hope to achieve that in my decorating someday. I don't feel like she even uses all that much stuff but it's just enough and works so perfectly.
The next few days weren't too exciting except that I got to sub a halfday that Wednesday, which was wonderful! I was in Mikey's classroom and I feel totally at home there so that was great. I learned about rain and clouds with the 4th graders and found out that you can measure the size of raindrops by leaving a pan filled with flour out in the rain for a few seconds and then baking it and sifting out all of the flour. The raindrops will have actually baked. Very strange but it looked cool on the movie we watched and I'm enough of a nerd that I found it interesting.
Thursday was very exciting though. The people who organized the dancing at Winterfest (Arthur Murray Dance Studio) were doing a free week of dancing. So Steven and I got two free private dance lessons and one free group lesson. Our first dance lesson was on Thursday afternoon. We decided that we love taking dance lessons together and are hoping this is something we can afford to do on a regular basis later in life. The lesson was only thirty minutes long but we had a lovely time. All of the people there are so nice and it's like a little family. Everyone was introducing us to everyone else. All the students and instructors seem to know each other really well.
After our lesson it was home for paninis and then out to Buckley to get our Christmas tree, which will be an entirely different blog entry so I won't go into detail about that. Then we went back to the dance studio for a group lesson. We learned The Hussle but the basic stuff we learned is so much the same as swing that it was a little boring for us. And we decided that we don't like group lessons as much because we would really rather not switch partners.
AND THEN WE WENT TO SEE HARRY POTTER!! Woohoo!! We felt like we had been waiting for so long! Steven was making fun of me because I kept saying that we were going to be tired after going to such a late movie. He said late movies start at ten and since ours was getting over at 10:30 that did not make it a late movie. I figured if the movie was making us get home after 11pm, it was a late movie. Well worth it though. It went by so quickly and I'm really sad that we have to wait another 8 months to see the next one... sigh... probably for the best though since I'll be sad that there aren't any more movies after that. I definitely went through withdrawal after I finished the 7th book.
Friday (the 3rd) was good because I got to work, a lot. I subbed at Westhill in a 5th grade class, which I loved. The teachers in that room do a wonderful job!! The kids all know their routines and what they're supposed to be doing when and they were so well-behaved and helpful. It felt so good to be working and to feel useful! I got to teach math and writing and help kids to actually learn something. It's such a great feeling. I love it. At some point during the day I found myself humming "sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, dm, dm, dm, dm, and you're always glad you came..." seriously, it's just so wonderful to go work there! I know a lot of the 5th and 6th graders and they all get so excited to see me and it makes me feel so special and a lot of the teachers know me and stop to say hi and it makes me feel like I'm a part of something. Mmm. So good.
And then I got to babysit in the evening. We watched the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and Kate and I decorated cookies. That girl really likes her sprinkles :) After the kids went to bed, Mom and Tara came over and watched The Polar Express and ate Frangos with me. They went home around 11 and I layed on the couch and almost fell asleep until Tim and Lissy got home at 1am!!! Oh my goodness! It was a really late night. They had gone to the xbox party at the EMP and Good Charlotte was playing and I guess they were just having so much fun that they lost track of time :) I got home at 2am and was so wired at that point that I couldn't fall asleep until 3am and then got up with Steven when he was getting ready for work at 7am. Ouch. Saturday was a tired day, but still super fun. I drove into Seattle and got to hang out with Lena for a little while. We shared holiday cupcakes at Cupcake Royal (eggnog and chocolate rum) and then went back to her house and drank tea and talked and it was really relaxing and fun. We both tend to be rather busy and it was nice to have a little time to catch up with one another.
In other good news, Chelsea was in town on Saturday -- WOOHOO!!! So great to see her! I really want her to move back up here sooner rather than later. It felt so fun and normal hanging out with her that I was just the saddest when I dropped her off and came to the realization that I wouldn't be seeing her again for at least a few months. We did a little Christmas shopping together and shared an eggnog truffle at See's. It was a very good date.
Sunday I did even more Christmas shopping -- mostly at Costco -- and then had family dinner for Uncle Scott's birthday. I love family dinner. Monday I worked on Christmas cards. Tuesday we had our second free dance lesson. Wednesday we had a lovely Seattle date. Himalayan High Energy tea at the TeaCup, SushiLand for dinner and then to see A Christmas Story: The Musical at the 5th Avenue theatre. Kind of a silly show but we laughed quite a bit and it was nice just to have a night out.
Today I FINALLY got to do my recording session from the voice class I took a couple of weeks ago. Eric, the instructor for my class, was back at his home on the East Coast but he called the recording studio at the start of my session and I was able to hear him in my headphones just as if he were actually in the studio. I LOVE recording like this!!! It's so much fun! And it wasn't even that bad hearing my voice played back either. I sounded way better than I do on voicemail and that was a great comfort since that's really the only time I had ever heard myself recorded before. I'm excited to hear the demos and hopefully start getting some work in the new year! Now I just need to come up with a business name...
Aren't you so glad that you've just been updated on every day of my life since Thanksgiving day!! Wow. Sorry. That was really long and detailed. I think the play-by-play was probably a bit unnecessary but we've been doing so much fun stuff and I just wanted to share all of it with you!!
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