New Year's Day

What a beautiful way to start out the new year! Was such a wintery kind of day, finally. I took two bike rides. One from my husband's work to my brother's house, where I took these photos. Then another with my family from their house down their road for a couple of miles. It was something we had never done all together before, and I hadn't ridden there for over 20 years! It was a fun ride, feeling like we were on vacation right next to home! I love times like that. All we need sometimes is a little change of perspective.

Afterwards we had dinner, looked at 600 photos on my brother's camera from just the last month, played Wii and watched the movie "Up"! During that time I also got a nap in. It was a fun night!

Today I stayed home with a sinus headache and started to reluctantly put Christmas away. Every year I'm reluctant to start the Christmas season and then when it's over, I'm sad! Time marches on though. I have two more weeks of my break until I go back to school. Hopefully I can be a little more productive in that time. Right now, I just feel hopelessly lazy.

More Christmas progression

I promised to post pictures of my tree as I went along and I never got around to it! Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas Eve. I am cooking and cooking and snacking as I go along tonight!

So here is the tree completed during the day.

Then at night with the new strand of lights. I'm so use to the old one's that were a little faded, so these seem really bright!

Some more of our special Christmas decor. Combo of Nativity Display and Christmas workshop!
I am finally in the Christmas spirit! Hope you are too!

Christmas in progress

I remember starting my first blog on a night similar to this at about the same time of night too! I was baking chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the night, while watching late night tv and figured it was good of a time as any to start a blog!
I meant to start the chocolate chip cookies much earlier today, but I watched a movie with my husband instead "Love in the Afternoon" with Audrey Hepburn. Then I kept interrupting that by checking my email after my hubby fell asleep. I guess we'll have to watch it again so he can see the ending! So I'm baking the cookies now while watching "White Christmas" and trying to stay up later than the noisy neighbor who is back in town. If I fall asleep after her then she won't wake me up and make me mad! Crazy logic I know.
I've been trying to do something each day during my break from school that I didn't feel like I had the brain capacity to do while school was in session. So far the last three days I've done pretty well. Cooking, watching movies and going through drawers and organizing pictures. It was so nice to watch a couple of movies yesterday without feeling guilty!

My husband brought home a Christmas tree yesterday from a local nursery. I still miss cutting down a pine from a Christmas tree farm. It was my favorite part of Christmas. This year was the first year I purposely didn't go with my husband to pick out a tree. It's not the same buying one at the store. I started to put the lights on tonight and realized the two of the strands had broken bulbs and I had no replacements. That put a halt on decorating until I can get new bulbs tomorrow! Here's a fuzzy pic of what we have so far. I'll take photos as it progresses! So far this Christmas season has had it's ups and downs. It just feels weird to me. It just occurred to me that we should visit the last local tree farm just for the experience anyway. Their trees are much too large and expensive for us right now, but we could at least go walk around!

Now that I don't have studying hanging over my head constantly, it's allowing me to think about things in life that I don't particularly like. I don't want to spend my break dwelling on them, but I don't want to ignore them by keeping busy with little things either. Not sure if I feel like tackling them head on either! Maybe I'll take a week to decide what to do. For now, I'm just trying to stay happy. Sometimes it's tough.

Rain!

It's been raining all day and it's been nice. I feel for those in the rest of the country who this storm will hit next though, because it probably won't be so nice!

My first semester at the university is coming to a close. Just 2 more days with 2 1/2 finals left to go. I am procrastinating studying as I write this! I think the middle of the night was made for studying though! haha
It looks as if I am on the right path to my desired career. I have a teacher who has taken a special interest in me (which is common when a teacher sees that a student has potential to go further) and has asked that I sign up for independent study/research next semester and then an internship the following semester. I guess it all looks good on a Grad School application. I am very grateful, but I know that it is not by chance because I have worked really hard.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the Christmas break. I was going to spend it looking for a new place to live, and I still will but of course it doesn't seem so pressing now since the loud, late night neighbor is gone for the Christmas break as well! Funny how it works like that sometimes.
I know I want to take lots of walks, cook some good food (since I won't be too distracted to cook) and try to finish all the books I've started reading over the last year! I had the goal of reading Atlas Shrugged this next month, but maybe I should give myself a break for awhile! I am hoping to go to Disneyland with my family this month to see it all decked out for Christmas, maybe that will get me in the mood.

It doesn't seem like Christmas time to me, probably because I just can't think about it right now. This may be one of those years where it comes and goes and I won't even realize it. I haven't had that happen since I was a teenager. At least that is better than the few years there when I dreaded it's coming and didn't want to think about it.

I've had my fun, so now it's time to get back to reading for awhile. Hopefully more exciting posts will come later!

Hi Gram! :)

So much to be grateful for..

Earlier this week I was asked if I really could hear waves crashing from inside my room? The answer is yes, I can. Especially at times like these when the surf is really big. I have had this privilege for eleven years now and I think I appreciated it only the first month we lived here! As I pondered on the significance of this to most other people, I was struck with how ungrateful I have been for the amazing things I do have in my life. I remember as a child listening to my grandma describe hearing the waves crashing at night from her room while vacationing in Hawaii and thinking that it must be the most wonderful thing in the world. I hoped that someday I would be able to experience the same thing.
It is sometimes difficult to not focus on the things I don't have instead of the things I do have.

I have been sick during this week I've had off from school and I have been grateful for the time to be away from the world and to sleep a lot without guilt. It has helped me to "refresh" myself a bit and to remember my goals and who I want to be.

Thanksgiving Day was wonderful and not food focused this year for me. We drove a couple of hours to my husband's aunt's house and enjoyed very light traffic in both directions. One of my husband's cousins has two small children and I enjoyed playing with them. We as a group also played "Apples to Apples" (my favorite card game), played pool and played video games. It was fun to have so much interaction and to just "play" in general. It was nice to take a break from doing school work too!

Now I am off to have a day after Thanksgiving dinner with my family! I look forward to driving the old backroad to their house and spending time together enjoying a good meal.

Thursday Night Sunsets

This term at school I have class on Thursday nights and the last two weeks since the time change I have seen the most beautiful sunsets right before class. The first one was after a very difficult day, while I was driving over random farm roads to school and the gorgeous red sunset was very comforting to me. The next week I was using the computer in the library at school when I noticed a funny orange/pink glow to my right. I looked over and there was this amazing sunset outside the glass walls of the library that everyone else was ignoring! I quickly changed to studying in a different part of the library to take advantage of a better view.
It made me think of my friend who has started a gratitude blog and how especially this time of year would be good to write a few gratitude posts!
So I am very grateful for these Thursday night sunsets and I look forward to only three more that I will enjoy at school this year! I hope next Thursday (Thanksgiving) there is a beautiful sunset that we all can enjoy and give thanks for.

New stuff (or a quick Halloween post)

This is going to be a very speedy post! I promised myself I would post a blog today..so here it is!
Two of my cool birthday gifts this year were...
A Pottery Barn gift card from my brother and his wife that I used to buy a cool retro phone! I love it, it even rings like an old phone!

I also was able to get a new camera thanks to my Gram and my husband. This one has a nice sturdy battery door and doesn't take pictures with spots in them!


Here are some samples of photos I've taken with this new camera...

This was on a favorite walk of mine.
The pumpkin family I made at the pumpkin patch while there with my brother and sister.
My brother's new black kitty. Not the best photo, but it does make it Halloweenish!

Special red velvet Halloween cupcakes that I made today. (Filled with raspberry jam and gummy spiders.)
Okay I'm done! Still having trouble with prioritizing my time effectively! Not sure what to do next.
Have a Happy Halloween everyone!