Happy New Year (early)

Well, Grant and I got back into Ohio last night (the 26th), and later this morning, we'll be heading out to Waterford, Michigan for lots of pre-wedding festivities (my friend, Kellie, is getting married on the 30th).

After the wedding, it's off to St. Joe, Michigan, where we will meet up with Mr. and Mrs. J! We'll be spending New Years Eve with them in Chicago! We are excited to see our dear friends from Albuquerque - we've missed them so!

White Christmas

I won't rub it in too much, because according to Pinky's blog, Albuquerque's getting a different kind of white Christmas, so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves...



I found my picture that I want to blow up to poster-size! This was kind of an accidental picture, but I think it turned out perfectly! Notice the little bird in the lower left-hand corner.

Greetings, from Sunny Florida!

Well, we're home. And it's beautiful. And warm (75!). And sunny. And we're so happy to be here! I haven't made it out to the beach yet, but I'm hoping to go tomorrow to take some pictures. I really want to take a picture of the beach, blow it up to poster size, and hang it in my cubicle at work. So for now, I "stole" this picture off the internet.
I typed in "Perdido Key pictures" on a search engine and this one popped up. Perdido Key is one of the many beautiful beaches in the Pensacola area. My parents had a condo there for a while (not one of these big, commercial-type of condos, but a small, mom-and-pop one), and I even lived at that condo for one glorious summer after I graduated from college. The condo is no longer there, thanks to Hurricane Ivan, but the beaches are still beautiful.

Talk About Classic!

I loved Mrs. J's post the other day about the Charlie Brown Christmas Special being such a classic.

While I was at the post office today, sending off some last minute packages, I saw they had a special edition Charlie Brown Christmas CD, for $10, so you know I had to pick it up. I love it!

P.S. Hey, Mrs. J, I deleted your comment that you wanted me to.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys....Whatcha Gonna Do

I completely forgot to blog about this totally blog-worthy moment that happened a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of our Pastor's 5-year-old son. So, thanks to Grant for reminding me.

So we were invited to someone's house for dinner after church on Sunday a couple weeks ago. The pastor and his family were also there. Well, while we were waiting for dinner to be served, the pastor was telling us about how his son-in-law. Well, the pastor's son (5 years old) thought it would be good for us to know what his uncle did for work. So, as the pastor was in the middle of telling us about his son-in-law, his song blurted out, "Yeah, he's a drug dealer."

I, for one, was hoping there was a good explanation why the guy that married our pastor's daughter is a drug dealer! Well it turns out that he's actually a pharmaceutical salesmen, and at one time he joked to the family that he was a drug dealer.

This just goes to show you, you have to be careful what you say in front of kids.

New Project

As many projects as I have on my plate right now, I've added one more. But this one, if it works out, will be a great experience, I think.

I realized the other day, that it's been almost 10 years since Grant and I graduated from high school. We still keep in touch with several people from our class, but we've lost touch with most. So last night, I sent out an email to everyone that graduated with us, who I have email addresses for (which wasn't very many), and suggested a reunion in March of 08. The reason I picked March is because that's when Grant graduates from AFIT, and we'll be heading out to So Cal. So I figured we could stop in P'cola on our way (well, not really on our way, but whatever) to LA, and have this little reunion. I figured if people know about it now, they can start planning for it.

So far, I've gotten 2 responses, and they've both been positive! So, I'm very excited about this. It will be fun to organize and plan for something like this. Now I need to drag out my yearbook, and figure out how to get in touch with some of these people.

You talkin' to me?

The WEIRDEST thing happened to Grant and I yesterday after church. We were going to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. Well, when we turned into the parking lot, I noticed that someone was crossing the lot to go into the store. Not so strange, right? Well, I noticed that even though he was already walking pretty slowly, he slowed down even more when he saw us. The whole time he's walking, he has his eyes on us.

Well, Grant saw this guy pretty much right when we turned into the parking lot. So, he was driving pretty slow as he approached the guy. Normally, when someone is as far away as this guy was from us, the driver wouldn't have to stop. Slowing down to let the person walk would be sufficient.

Well, I guess this guy wanted us to stop for him, even though he purposefully slowed down his pace when he saw us coming. When we got close to him, he stopped right in front of us, had this terribly mean, bitter expression on his face, then took one of his fingers and pointed at us, just stood there for a second (for emphasis?), then walked in the store, staring at us the whole time. Grant and I both laughed out of shock, and put our hands up like, "What?" We were puzzled the rest of the afternoon about the whole situation. That has never happened to either of us before, and it was definitely the weirdest thing that's happened to us in a long time!

So this is winter...

Well, Grant and I were wrong. Dayton is not just a little bit colder than Albuquerque...it's A LOT colder! We had our first official winter storm yesterday, and let me tell you, it was not fun (or warm)!

It took me an hour to get to work, when it normally takes about 20 minutes. And I had it easy! Some people had a 2+ hour commute. Grant tried to make it to school, but with the stop-and-go traffic (because of all the accidents, and the cars skidding everywhere), his little Mustang couldn't make it up a hill. He had to come back home and put some weight in the back. By the time he tried again, the roads were already cleared. This was a common sight around town yesterday (taken from the Dayton Daily News website).



And did I mention how frickin' cold it was? I already knew that I was a warm weather type of person, but this past week has just confirmed it. My co-workers laughed at me the other day when I asked if it would get much colder than this. I was watching the Weather Channel the other morning before work, and we were actually colder than Alaska! Now, I'm thinking that Alaska was probably having pretty "warm" temperatures to be above us, but still...that should never happen! Right now, at 6:17 in the morning, it's 10 degress, and feels like 2.

So, all this time, I thought I had experienced a "real" winter in Albuquerque. Boy, was I wrong!

PS - Tink, I know y'all have it WAY worse than we do, but for a Florida girl, this is pretty bad!

Movie

Check out Megan's brother-in-law's blog and trailer to his new movie, The Road to Pecumsecah. Megan's husband, Andy, helped his brother make this movie this past summer in Philadelphia. Pretty cool!

Walgreens

I just wanted to take a second and rant about Walgreens photo department. First of all, let me say that our Walgreens in Albuquerque was great. Not only was it in walking distance from our house (although I don't know that I ever actually walked there), but they had a great photo department. However, here in lovely Ohio, things at Walgreens...not so great.

Last year, I made all of my Christmas cards that I sent out. This year, I knew that wasn't going to happen because, unlike last year, I'm working full-time. So, I decided to do one of those picture cards. Well, I picked one out that I liked on Walgreens website. Ordered them, and the next day they were ready for me to pick up.

So, after work, I went to Walgreens. First of all, I waited at the counter for about 5 minutes before anyone came to help me. The cashier even made an announcement pretty soon after I walked up that someone needed to go to the photo department. Five minutes. Then, the guy comes up, I tell him I'm picking up an order, and give him my last name.

He then looks through the "S" bin, and moves aside a big envelope, which I was pretty sure was mine, because it was a pretty big order. But he moves it to the side, and keeps looking. I tell him that I ordered Christmas cards, so it would be a pretty big package. He tells me he can't find it. I lean over the counter, look at the first big envelope that he pushed to the side, and there was my name. So I tell him, and he gets it.

While I was waiting those wonderful five minutes to be helped, I noticed an advertisement on the counter that said if you order your photo Christmas cards through them, you get a free pen that writes on photos, while supplies last. So when he hands me my order, I ask him about the pen. He looks at the ad like he's never seen it before. Reads it very carefully, then tells me that he's never heard of that before, but he'll look anyway. Well, he looks quickly, then says that they don't have them. So that's that.

I went on to my yoga class, then home. It hit me in the car on my way home that I bet he didn't give me the envelopes that were supposed to come with my order. So I get home, open up the envelope, and sure enough, no envelopes. I called and talked to the same guy, and he immediately realizes that, yes, he forgot to put the envelopes in there. I asked if I could pick them up the next day, and he says yes, and apologizes.

So, the next day, after work, I go to pick up the envelopes. This time, I probably only waited about 3 minutes before the same guy came to the counter. He recognized me, so he gives me my envelopes.

Yesterday, I decided I was going to address the envelopes. In the back of my head, I was kind of thinking, "What if these aren't the right size envelopes?" But then discounting it, because, surely, he would've checked the size of the cards I ordered, and put the right sized envelopes in there. Well, he didn't. I got the wrong sized envelopes. But whatever...I'm just going to trim off the white edges of the photo card, and use these envelopes, and never go back to that Walgreens again.

The Old New Jersey Shore

Has anyone ever seen the movie, Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken? Well, when Grant's Aunt and Uncle took us to the Jersey shore, I couldn't stop singing that part of the song that I made the title for the post. Except Sonora was singing it when she went to Atlantic City, and we didn't actually go to Atlantic City, but whatever.

Anyway, that's what we did the day after Thanksgiving. That's right...no shopping for me, even though we were about an hour away from a city that would have everything that I could ever want to buy! But we had a great time. It was an incredibly beautiful day, which made up for the not-so-great weather we had the day before.

We drove from their town all the way down the shore to Ocean Grove. We saw some incredibly beautiful houses, one of which was Bon Jovi's. We eventually made our way to Ott's, Uncle Lee and Aunt Liz's favorite restaurant on the Shore. We had a fantastic view from the window at our table! For people who used to live near the beach, and now live very far away from any beach, this was perfect!
Then we took a walk along the boardwalk.


It was a great day...nice and relaxing in between 2 very busy days. But I'll get to the Saturday after Thanksgiving later.

How's that for a cliff hanger?

Check it out!

Check out my new header, courtesy of Tink. Cool, huh?!