On Monday, I celebrated the 35th anniversary of my birth. 35 seems significant, but as usual I feel no different. Since it was a work day, that is how I spent most of my day. After work, we went out to dinner. Keeping in spirit with last year's birthday we found a Japanese Hibachi restaurant not too far from our house and really enjoyed it. The chef was very funny and we all laughed a lot during the meal, plus the food was very good. The bad part of a great dinner is that I was too stuffed for dessert...but the kids still sang to me, and I managed to fit in a few bites like a good birthday girl should. My gift from James and the kids was a Kindle Fire, totally unexpected (well, until last Friday when I got a mysterious e-mail from Amazon welcoming me to the Kindle Club...oops!) and is turning out to be a lot of fun - not only can I read books, but it's a full blown tablet so I can watch Netflix, check e-mail, play games, search the web and lots of other things. All in all, a great day and I am thankful to be starting another year of my life.
The rest of December has been fairly uneventful as we have been busy preparing for Christmas. The tree has been decorated. The stockings are hung by the chimney. The house is decked out with Christmas decorations, and things are in all new places this year which somehow makes them feel new. Gifts are purchased (not quite done yet, but there's still a few days). Cookies have been baked (with more to come). Cards have been mailed out. Despite all of these preparations, I have been having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I am not sure why, but I think it has to do with the weather. It's not been cold at all here, even balmy some days. Any precipitation is wet, and not white as it feels like it should be in December. Yes, I miss the snow. I said I wouldn't but I do. I miss it now because it makes it feel more like Christmas. In Utah, even if there wasn't much snow on the ground at our house we could always look up at the gorgeous snow covered mountains. Not so much here in the flat lands of Virginia. Luckily, my bah-humbug attitude hasn't rubbed off on the kids or James. We've gotten pretty prepared despite the lack of good winter weather. The kids are really excited, especially Keely. Quinn even summoned a steadfast belief in Santa this year, making his list and leaving it by the tree for Santa's elves. Keely chose not to make a list, saying she wants to be surprised.
I feel like today kicks off the Christmas week as we await a visit from the North Carolina Donovan family who are stopping in Virginia on their way to New Jersey. Then we anxiously await the Florida Donovan family who will join us on Christmas Eve until after the New Year. We are all very excited to have a little one underfoot for this special holiday season. On Monday, we will head up to New Jersey to spend a few days celebrating with the grandparents on both sides, and other extended family. It's going to be a wonderful Christmas for sure, with the most important reason being that we get to spend it with family - both immediate and extended - and we are truly blessed!
When we were in New Jersey for Thanksgiving, we took advantage of a nice warm day after the holiday to explore Holmdel Park with Grandma and Grandpa. The kids haven't been to Longstreet Farm before and we walked around to see the horses, cows, pigs, sheep, etc. and all of the historic buildings. After the farm, we headed up to one of the many playgrounds to let the kids play. While we were there, I wanted to do some investigation of times past. James and I used to visit HP when we were dating, often having picnics there and hiking through the woods. On one trip, we carved our names into a tree as many teenagers do. I've always wondered if it weathered the years, and if we could even find the exact location. So as we walked through the woods this November, I looked at the many trees and read names hoping to find ours. After a few tries, and a bit off the beaten path, I found it! I was so excited. We hadn't dated the carving, but I estimate it to be about 19 years old - sometime from 1992 or 1993. Thank goodness Grandma had her camera to snap a few photos of our historic find! The kids wanted us to carve their names below, but we didn't have a knife so we will have to go back another time to add them to the record.