year of newness

well, everyone else is blogging about the new year, so i figured i better get busy. christmas was amazing. celebrating the birth of Jesus is always hard with all the commercialism around, but it's still stinking awesome that God came to earth in the form of a human so we could understand Him better. wow! splitting time with two families was actually easier than expected. christmas eve-eve was spent with the walkers eating dinner at the slatens' house for the FIRST TIME EVER. after five years of dating and six months of marriage, it's a shame that this was the first time ever, but it was indeed amazingly fun and delicious. and afterward we spent some good time down in the basement with the kids playing darts and pinball and the grownups discussing the mountain cottage plans. all in all, it was a really, really fun night.

we spent christmas eve, night and morning with the slatens, christmas afternoon and evening with the walkers and beenes. there were WAY too many gifts for me and chris, but we are grateful for all everyone did for us. experiencing a slaten christmas morning was a bit of a let-down when we realized that colin was already downstairs fully dressed. we were all supposed to wait in anticipation at the top of the steps in our pjs!! i guess we're too old...*sniff* i was buried in gifts from them! the highlight of the morning was the gloriously soft and warm llbean "wicked good clogs". (i'm wearing them right now!) FINALLY! after three years of asking santa for them!!! i had concluded that i would just buy them myself if i didn't get them!!! thank you m.i.l.!! and the next highlight of the morning was when i started to open the gift from christopher (we opened one together, one at the slatens and one at the walkers) and he and his dad yelling "STOP!" in unison and bolting out of the room leaving gaye, colin and i in utter bewilderment...but mostly me. the mister came back in with the video camera, and i knew something was about to happen. christopher appeared in the doorway from behind the wall with a goofy smile on his face and i shouted, "IT'S A PONY!!" not quite. it was a drum!! chris got me a djembe!!!!!! we have played around with the idea of me learning percussion the past few months, and i had mentioned getting one, but i had no idea he would actually do it! i'm SO excited. we've had a few "jam sessions" already, and he claims that it sounds good...i have no choice but to believe him! :) then we rushed out the door to have brunch with the walkers - stacey and laura included. (my older sisters...if you didn't know i had sisters, now you do!!) we ate the BEST food, opened awesome gifts, laughed forever, and played "apples to apples" forever. it was SO much fun. they headed out and we headed to the beenes for dinner.

we had SO much fun spending time with and playing games with the walker/beene clan. the people i came from continue to amaze me in their humor and creativity. i had a few minutes to sit down with my girl cousins, and it truly made me miss them. we've always been close, but i've never really spent quality time with any of them. this, i regret. i got to spend some good time with their daughters, which was absolutely the best! little mae mae had me read about seven books while sitting in my lap, and i was in heaven. lila kept asking for "li-seeee?" which made me smile for weeks. alice and i carried on true adult conversations about investing and the state of the economy...not really, but she sure is mature at six!! and i finally got to spend time around tiny two year old liza, the girl i basically haven't seen since she was in-arms. she. is. hilarious. and talk about looking like her DAD! it's crazy!! the girls in bed, the adults played "apples to apples" until about 10:30. emily kept winning, but we just kept playing. it was fabulous!!!

so that was christmas...

for new years, the slatens wound up going up to the cottage (see above pic) for some stuff (it's WAY further along now - the whole frame is up!) so we were on housesitting duty. NEW YEARS PARTY!!! their house is the BEST place to have a party. i don't have any pictures yet b/c we don't know where the camera-to-computer cord is...we shall find it soon...hopefully. we wound up with about 20-ish people there, WAY THE HECK too much food, and lots of fun. we ate beefy-cheese dip, played games, ate meatballs, watched michel gondry videos, ate ham rolls, played more games, ate m&ms, handed out all the OLD new year paraphernalia, drank sparkling grape juice and champagne (we finally opened the bottle from our honeymoon!), went INSANELY CRAZY for about a half hour after the ball dropped including a parade outside with my djembe - it's all on video somewhere..., ate some cookie cake, watched "finding nemo", cleaned up, talked, ate oatmeal cookies and some cheese ball. some people left, a lot spent the night. we went to bed around 4am. FOUR AM!!! i can't believe i stayed up that late. then around 10:30 the next morning, people started stirring, i put in the cinnamon rolls to bake, people ate cereal and cinnamon rolls, we watched a bit of "the game" (can't even remember who was playing...tennessee and someone...sorry josh!!) and then once it was just nathan, jency, chris and me, we watch "the empire strikes back"!! (i have finally broken and have agreed to see "star wars" for the first time. we watched the first one a few weeks ago, and must watch the final one before monday b/c that's when it's due back!) (oh, and they say that watching "the new ones" is a waste of time...hm.)

so there it is. now i'm back at work and am literally BURIED under paperwork and processing. OH BOY! it's a race to honors weekend!!!

i'm amazed if you've read this far....

*edit* WHY OH WHY do my pictures always turn out SO ENORMOUS????
**edit** I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!