I Celebrated Christmas By...

Seeing the Messiah at the National Cathedral with Annie & Joe

Singing with new friends at their annual Christmas Sing-a-long Party

Listening to the Christmas program at the Potomac Ward

Checking out the Festival of Lights at the Washington DC Temple

Eating delicious food at the Relief Society Christmas Dinner

Making cinnamon rolls for our Work Holiday Party

Going to The Hobbit with the Moore's (not strictly Christmas)

Making eight varieties of cookies for Christmas presents
 

Grabbing breakfast at La Madeleine with Tim

 Wearing Christmas Jammies from Aunt and Uncle in New York with Annie

A Little Christmas Cheer

I've been doing lots of Christmas related things lately that I'll be telling you about soon, but nothing has gotten me more in the Christmas spirit than this:

Somebody left this stocking full of super random stuff (this list includes socks, Santa PEZ, fart noise putty, play-doh, and stickers) on my doorknob last night. I seriously have no idea who it was, but I LOVED it. So thanks, Elves or Santa or whomever! It totally made my night! And you saved me from a trip to my pity pot (note to self: don't watch romantic comedies when you are sick and nearing the one year anniversary of a tough break-up). Because, seriously, fart noise putty.

Don't Worry, I Still Exist

So, 2012 has kind of been the Great Undocumented Year. But that's probably fine because on the whole 2012 was not the greatest year of all time. That's not to say that is didn't have its bright spots, but on the whole, not the greatest. Fingers crossed on 2013, though. And toes.

But I have been doing things. So, let me tell you about them.

Blackfriar's Theater

One thing that I did was drive down to Staunton, VA to attend a showing of Shakespeare's Cymbaline performed by the American Shakespeare Center at Blackfriar's theater. The theater is a replica of the indoor theater that Shakespeare staged his play on, and they try to stay true to the spirit of Shakespeare's plays by leaving the lights on the whole time and engaging the audience. This helps make the plays make a little more sense, since it turns out that there are a lot of audience asides in Shakespeare's plays. It was extremely well done and I enjoyed myself immensely.

After the play, we went to eat at this cute restaurant called the Depot where we had a lot of stinky cheeses and everything was amazingly delicious. While we were there we noticed a couple of the actors eating there as well. Turns out they noticed us as well, and when they were done they came over to chat with us. Which was exciting, because they had done a great job and gave us a chance to gush at them a little. But actually, they weren't there to chat with us. One of my friends had semi-accidentally taken a flash photo with her phone (she meant to take the photo; she didn't mean for it to be flash. She also speaks English as a second language and very young, so she didn't actually know that it was a bit of a faux pas). The actors had ACTUALLY come over to give us the "no flash photography" lecture. Seriously? Seriously! I mean, I understand the rule, but who made them the flash photo police? I think I would have been more okay with it if they hadn't come over all chummy like they just wanted to say hi to the fans. Unbelievable.

But anyway, it was fun and now I have an awesome story to recount which I can conclude with a derisive "thesbians!" and that's awesome.

African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew

I got asked to make a meal for one of the families in our ward who had just welcomed a new addition. Cooking for strangers is always hard, since you just never know what they are going to like, and in this case, the meal had to be gluten free. So, I decided to make one of Ed's favorite recipes: African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew. It seems like a good choice because it was novel, had a nice spice kick without being spicy, and it also freezes well. So I made it and delivered it, and discovered there had been some kind of communications break down along the line, and someone else had already delivered dinner for the night. Oh well, though, like I said, the stew keeps well, and that would just be a few extra days of food they wouldn't have to worry about.

I didn't think much of it until the next day when I was heating up the stew for my lunch (Obviously, I made extras for myself) and discovered that a coworker/friend of mine had ALSO brought African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew for lunch. What are the odds, right? I'm sure you can tell where this is going. They were the other family who'd brought dinner that night. And they brought the same dish as I did. Seriously, what are the odds? I don't think they were exactly the same, but still, that poor family. They are going to think that's all we know how to make around here!

Game Night(s)

I've been spending a lot of time with these people:

Doing this:

Obviously, that's a picture means "playing board games." The game pictured is actually not one we play often because it's kind of dull, but it works as an abstract representation. Anyway, games are funny because these boys are funny. So even though I'm not very good at games (I invariably come in second to last), I enjoy game nights. Yay!

Thanksgiving

I totally brought my camera to take pictures of Thanksgiving and completely failed to do so. Mine was pretty low key. I ran 5 miles in the morning to prepare for the engorgement, and then spent mid morning to afternoon crafting Thanksgiving dishes like homemade dressing from scratch (starting with cutting and drying the french bread I used), pumpkin pizzas (use savory spiced pumpkin puree as the sauce), and roasted brussels sprouts. Then I took my beautiful food creations over to a friend's house where we proceeded to eat many other crafted from scratch items, plus a beautifully roasted turkey and watch football. And then we had round two the next night because there were definitely not enough of us to eat all of the yumminess that there was.

I wish there were more to tell you, but there doesn't seem to be. I think one of my resolutions for next year might have to be "document my life better" and/or "have more of a life.

Good Weather

I saw about 5x as many people as usual when I was out running this morning.

I guess they agree with me that you absolutely should take advantage of good weather in December to run outdoors.

I also think that I deserve about three gold stars for thinking 51 degrees is good weather.

Let Me Save You the Trouble

So, this morning as I was getting ready for work nothing sounded good for breakfast. Seriously, nothing. So I forced myself to eat some almonds and I decided that I would buy one of those bottled smoothie things from the cafeteria. And then I remember that I was working out of a different office today, and it turns out that they didn't have a cafeteria, but the did have a vending machine with Muscle Milk brand protein shakes in it, and I figured it was better than nothing.

I was wrong. Nothing would have almost certainly been better. It was the single most disgusting thing I have ever chugged down in my life. It was cloyingly sweet and tasted totally artificial (unsurprising, since The bottle label is like "Muscle Milk. Contains no milk"). And, even worse was the after taste which lasted for HOURS. It wasn't until well after lunch that the after taste truly went away. So, do yourself a favor and just say no.

White Wedding

I'm not really sure where the first half of November has gone, but some of it went to a quick trip to Utah for my brother's wedding, which was pretty fun and a nice break from the death by training that's been going on at work. I flew out last week Thursday. And let's talk about this for a minute. Through Thursday of last week Utah had been having absolutely gorgeous weather. And Virginia had been having really, really cold weather. This is what happened starting Friday morning:

It was snowy and cold pretty much the whole time I was in Utah. Wanna know what the weather was like in Virginia while I was in Utah? Gorgeous. Wanna know what the weather was like when I came back? Cold. Cold, cold, cold. I swear Winter is messing with me.

ANYWAY, so I went to Utah for my brother's wedding. Friday was a lot of getting ready for the wedding, but before that, I stole Loo and we went to visit one of my dear friends who I hadn't seen in years and years. She's got an adorable little family now, and a busy and awesome sounding life, and it was a delight to spend some time with her catching up.

Then Loo and I did a quick spot of shopping during which I somehow got conned into buying more sweaters than I set out too, and we bought the happy couple a sausage and cheese basket, because it seemed somehow appropriate.

On Friday night there was a pizza party for the families, because, well, none of us had ever met Bearded Brother's fiancee before. So we ate and laughed and then we played Two Truths and a Lie and laughed even more. There were a lot of people, because, big families, but it was fun, and Bearded Brother and Fiancee seemed happy.

And then it was the wedding on Saturday. Which was lovely. Here are some pictures.

 

Saturday after the wedding we put my Aunt's house back together and then pretty much just chilled for the rest of the evening, which was really nice after all the work of the wedding. When I get married, I'm going to pay someone else to do all of it. Seriously.

On Sunday I got to spend the whole day with Momma Bear and the kiddos! Their sacrament meeting (worship service) was put on by the children and it was adorable. And then we spent the rest of the day chilling at home. The kids showed off their sweet dance moves and we had yummy food, and caught up on life and stuff and it was super fun. The Bear family is pretty cute:

Getting home on Monday was kind of an ordeal. I spent a lot of time trying to find someone to pick me up from the airport, to no avail, and eventually decided that I would just take a cab, which in the end turned out to be a good choice because I landed about two hours later than anticipated. I'm usually okay with delays because, meh, they happen, but these seemed particularly ordealish, probably because I was rushing from one plane to the next, and so grabbed a really, really disappointing sandwich to eat since I was super hungry and thought I was pressed for time. And also because a good hour of the delay was spent in the airplane on the runway. Nothing worse than that "so close, and yet so far" feeling while being squished in a puddle hopper. But, I made it home and back to more training. Whee!

Anyway, welcome to the family to my brother's new wife. I'll come up with an adorable blog moniker for you eventually!

Morning Run

In The Battle of the Morning Run, sometimes I win, and sometimes the hills win.

Today, victory goes to the hills.