'Twas the night before Christmas...

[DISCLAIMER: If I miss anyone's name in this post, I'm sorry. I could leave out the names, but I like showing off how many friends I have. ;)]

Well, I believe the holidays have officially worn me out. I'm off work next week, and I'm planning on using it to recover. This week - well, I haven't been worth a whole lot this week. Good thing there's only one major goal this week at work - to get the application I've been working on for the past 8 months into production (finally), before I leave. So far we've managed to push it off until the very last minute - tomorrow at 5 pm. Cross your fingers - it's do or die time.

The holidays were busy and tiring, but good to me. When asked if I wanted for Christmas, my response was that I hadn't really given it much thought. The truth is, no one really needed to get me much of anything because I got what I wanted - a degree and a job. I got both of those Christmas presents around the middle of December, so I was set. Anything else after that point was just icing on the cake for me. And blessed I was.

One thing I enjoyed was getting to spend some much-missed time over the holidays with people from my house church at BOL. The last house church meeting of the year was December 22, and I attended after quite a bit of absence the last few months. And I was welcomed back with open arms. It felt like I hadn't even been gone at all. I love those people so much. I've heard about bad experiences that others have had with their cell groups, house churchs, growth groups, Bible studies or whatever, and I feel so blessed to have been and still be a part of such a wonderful group. They have a way of making me know when I'm not there that I'm missed and still much loved. I'm also especially thankful for what an encouragement they've been in getting me through school these last few years. So the time I spent with them over the holidays (both that last house church meeting and a somewhat impromptu game night on New Year's Eve Eve) was welcomed.

Christmas Eve started off with the opportunity to attend a morning service at BOL, which I hadn't been able to do in a while. Again, same thing - welcomed with open arms. BOL-ers are good people. :) Then it was off to Bob Evans for the traditional Christmas brunch (which became lunch this year) with my friends. This year our crew consisted of Crystal, Doug, the Broaddus clan, Ron, Seren and Patrick, Ian, Tom, and Tim and Fia. We had fun and somehow I ended up at a table with a bunch of Rose-Hulman alumni. I'm not sure how that happened, but I think they all appreciated the opportunity to be among fellow geeks. ;)

The rest of Christmas Eve was spent finishing my Christmas shopping and wrapping presents before collapsing from exhaustion. (I had a LOT of presents left to wrap!) The next morning I headed to my parents' house in good ol' "Lebtuck" (as it's known by some). Typical day with the fam. My mom always makes a huge lunch for stuff like this, and always some kind of good dessert. That's one thing I really enjoy about going home for holidays - you get to eat the food you grew up on. I eat out all the time, so it's a nice change.

I was kind of disappointed that this year my mom didn't buy the usual gifts for me and my brother. Don't get me wrong, I did like the gifts I got, but I've gotten used to getting a couple of things. Every year since my grandparents passed away, my parents have always bought me and my brother two things: one of those really big, thick peppermint sticks and one of the big cans of popcorn with 3 sections in it. To me, this has always kind of commemorated my grandparents. These were things that they liked, and I was starting to like the tradition of remembering them that way. But my brother and I mentioned that we missed them this year, so I have a feeling they'll be back. ;)

Christmas Day evening was spent with the Broaddus clan and the rest of the single people escaping their families on Christmas. Nice time with my other "family". We drank, and cuddled. What better way to spend Christmas? ;)

For some unknown reason, I started out thinking that my New Year's would be bad. I'm not sure why I thought that, really - just a feeling I had. But that whole weekend actually went quite well, starting with a nice chat with a friend over Starbucks, then spending Friday evening playing games with John, Shannon, Crystal, Crystal's friend Melissa, Caleb, and Mo and Dan. Maybe next time Caleb will learn to not give away the wrong card when playing Fluxx. :)

New Year's Eve itself was fun and kind of eventful. My roommate (Angie) threw a party, and I played a new game called Apples to Apples with her, Adriel, Robert, and Doug. I also taught them how to play Hex Hex (which had to be spelled out to anyone who called and asked what we were doing). All of us and Nicole played Hex Hex while Crystal and Lauren watched and made comments from the peanut gallery.

Shortly after Tom arrived (I'm still really sorry about leaving like that, Tom) and after we finished taking pictures of all the girls wearing black shirts and jeans (which was all of the girls),



Crystal, Nicole, Lauren, and I rushed out the door to make it over to the Broaddus house (could that be the new Mecca?) by midnight. We rang in the new year by clinking glasses of champagne and I got my midnight kiss from a really hott... 3-year-old. Isn't he the cutest?



Shortly after all the midnight celebration, we talked to Jon, who (after putting his kids to bed at 9:00) had to ring in the new year alone and sober. He made the joke that we should make him a whiskey sour and the four of us girls could fight over who got to bring it to him. This, of course (us being the sweet, wonderful, beautiful girls that we are), made us look at each other and go - "We should do that! Which one of us is sober enough to drive?" Lauren won, and the four of us, none of which were sober, one of us being under the legal drinking age, and with an open container of alcohol (the almost-forgotten whiskey sour) in the car, made the trek to Beech Grove to make our friend Jon's first few hours of the year a little bit better with some alcohol and some, um... affection. ;)

After returning to the Mecca, I decided to retire for the evening (morning?), since I knew we were planning to attend church in a few hours. My beautiful (but not as smart as me--this time) ;), Sunday-school-teaching "sister" chose to stay up longer before finally collapsing and having to be carried upstairs to bed. We did (somehow) make it to church on time the next day, however. (Thankfully, church people never start anything on time.)

Thus ends the (wow, really long) story of my holidays. And explains why I will spend next week, my vacation, catching up on some much-needed zzzz's...