76 posts from 2006

Show us an unforgettable memory from 2006.  

Hmmm, let's see. I got married, that's pretty unforgettable, right? We got married Jan 4th, 2006 at Comlongon Castle in Dumfries Scotland.

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Only 5 days until our first anniversary! I can't believe it's been a year already! It's just flown by. I think we're gonna wait until payday to do anything for it though.

I borrowed Julie's sewing machine (a Brother PS-31 Quick System) and did some sewing of the first quilt but then the bobbin ran out and after I wound it up, I realized I have no idea how to thread it bcz my sewing machine at home is a drop-in one and this one is a weird like vertical loading one. So I'll have to ask Julie tomorrow when I see her, just how to do that.

Oh, when Pieter and I were in the States, we saw Stranger Than Fiction with a friend and it was brilliant! I'm not a huge Will Ferrel fan but he was genius in this movie! It's all about this guy, Harold Crick, finding out he's in fact a character in this woman's novel. And he's about to be bumped off. I think the only down-side to this movie was the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal (definitely NOT a fan, I've never really liked the characters she plays).

Stranger Than Fiction

Show us something from the 80's.

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Hey, I'm from the 80's!!! I am from that Orwellian year! 1984! WHOO HOO!

(Meant to be posted several hours ago... when it was still Christmas Eve)

We're at the In-Laws right now, having a great lazy-day Christmas Eve. I'm still in my jammies (at 6:30pm) but will be changing out of them to go to a midnight Christmas Eve service at the church where Hazel plays the organ. I've never been to a midnight service so I'm stoked. I'm hoping there will be candles to light and hold (you know that tradition?). Christmas here in England is definitely different to Christmas back home. I'm so used to having a big family gathering and having it be noisy and disorganized and just fun but here it's just the 4 of us (Julie and the fam went to Gavin's folks this Christmas) so it's been pretty sedate. So much though that I forgot for a while that today was Christmas Eve just bcz we haven't really done any festive tradtions. Pieter's family isn't really big on festive decorations or traditions or anything like that. They're just too... practical for that sort of thing.

I can't wait until we move back to the States and have kids so we can start doing our own traditions. I'm very much into throwing myself into Christmas by decorating and baking and having get-togethers. I wouldn't say that I get into the consumerism of Christmas but I like to give people gifts to show them I love them. I dn't know if most have heard the the love languages but apparently there was a book written several years ago categorizing the way people show their love either through spending quality time or being physically affectionate or buying their loved ones gifts, etc. For Pieter and others, I can understand that getting a gift doesn't necessarily translate to I LOVE YOU in their minds but to me, I love going out and looking for things with someone special in mind and I like receiving them too, not because I'm getting something but bcz it means to me that they were thinking about me and wanting to find something I would enjoy etc.

I think that the part of Christmas I like the most is being with family. Christmas Eve has always been the BIG night in our family, when we go to my grandma's house and have Christmas dinner and spend time with the cousins, aunts and uncles and just basking in the glow of Christmas. I think this Christmas is going to be especially hard and I think I would have liked to go with Gavin and his family as well as with the in-laws bcz it would have mimicked the big family gatherings I'm used to, but then I wasn't really consulted.

Gees, I was just wanting this to be a Christmas post and here I go, whining again. It's not that I don't like it here, I love spending time with the in-laws, I'm one of those special people who have amazingly AWESOME in-laws that are not meddlesome or annoying in any manner. What I mean is that although this is a great visit with them, that's all it feels like. This could be a weekend in July for all the Christmas spirit I'm feeling right now.

I've been able to upload photos onto Vox from our vacation.

Here's adorable baby Angela!!!! It's she the cutest?! The middle photo is her and mommy Julie and then the right one is her in my arms. She's too precious for words. So little and not very fussy. Only 2 months old here. I wish I could have snapped a photo of her flashing her dimples (got them from daddy).

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Here we are with Jim-Bob the mule. This is on the horse ranch of my grandmother's piano student. He and his mother and father raise Apaloosa horses and sell them all over the world. His mother bought Jim-Bob the mule to teach him to ride horses and heard that mules were much easier to ride bcz they don't bounce as much as horses. JimBob was a sweetie and loved to poke at people's pockets for treats.

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Just look at this breath-taking scenery in Wyoming. The right scene is from the friend's horse ranch and the left is from the back balcony of my grandparents' house. Those are Russian olive trees (on the left) and they are beautiful with the snow. I kept thinking that their silveriness came from the snow but it's their leaves.

It seems that now I've returned home, I've gone into hibernation mode. I'm not even getting hungry in the middle of the day (causing me to miss lunch and have a late dinner). I wake up at 6am fine and get Pieter off to work by 7:30am and then I try to read or knit or something for a bit before I shower to give the water time to heat back up (ah, the eccentricites of the "first place") but lately I've been crashing for a few hours or more! Yesterday I didn't get up until about 1:30pm!!! It's disgusting and I don't like sleeping most the day away.

I think this is a culmination of not having a job to go to everyday and being homesick. Having come from Cali, I've realized even more that I've been missing. It has an energy that I'm tuned into while over here I'm lost in the frenetic vibe of east London. And of course while in Cali, everyone around kept mentioning getting together for Christmas in Cali, which just rubbed my nose into the stinky pile of poo that spelled out "But you won't be there" in big, steaming letters.
And then Pieter mentions that if I get a job right after Christmas, we'll probably be able to save up enough to visit for Memorial Weekend. Yeah, no pressure there. Memorial weekend is just a HUGE FREAKIN' DEAL in my family.

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Was going through some photos my friend Bonnie took a while ago. I did little logos for each of us: Ryann, Audrey, Bonnie and me.

Do you have a nervous habit?
Submitted by Herding Cats.

All throughout my childhood, I was a nail biter. I tried many remedies to stop it but to no avail. It was only once I moved to Mexico at 16 to live with my aunt for a year did it stop. I couldn't believe it. It just stopped on its own. I was ecstatic! When I went back home over Christmas, I was ready to show them off.
They didn't even last the car ride home from the airport.
I returned to Mexico for the rest of the school year and they grew back, and long. I moved back to California and my brother moved out and off to UC Davis and they still grew. So I could only attribute my nail biting to being around my brother.
However this past US visit told me that no, it's not just him. I'd been biting my nails like crazy during our visit and have only now stopped since returning home. I forgot how much my dad can drive me nuts as well.

Back to reality
Back to the here and now
Yeah.

You know I'm depressed when I start quoting Soul II Soul lyrics....

We got back home just fine. Actually we got to the flat earlier than we thought we would, about 12:30p. Unpacked a bit, slept some (too much bcz then we were up until 2am and Pieter had to work today), watched some good ole Hogan's Heroes Season 2 on DVD, ate pesto pasta bcz that's all there was.

For our early Christmas, we got The Simpsons Season 8, Hogan's Heroes Season 2, awesome chopsticks from SIL Sarah J, I got some cool Andrew Lang fairy books, a Happy Bunny sweatshirt saying Cute but Psycho (so me!), The Offspring's Greatest Hits, Homer Simpson tree ornament, and (always welcome) cash.

For some reason, Vox won't upload the adorable photos of baby Angela and me onto the site :0( but have no fear, I'll post them soon!

We're leaving home and returning to the UK in 12 hours... *sniff*