Holidays!

Hello, hello!  Happy holidays, everyone!

Things here have been great.  We had a wonderful Christmas.  We had friends come over and Amanda made a wonderful lasagna and an even more wonderful dessert.  :)  We also had a delicious salad and some great bread.  It was very fun.  Amanda bought me an iPod dock, so I can listen to my ipod at work without headphones...when my office-mate isn't in.  It's pretty great.

Yesterday and today have been beautiful as well.  Just days after Christmas, and it's about 70 degrees outside.  70 degrees!  I went to Taco Bell to get lunch a bit ago and only wore a tshirt and jeans!  No coat!  I love VA weather.

Yesterday we went to Winchester, VA to look at a new community being built.  We're discussing moving there instead of back to MI...but who knows?  MI is where the family is, but it's cold and boring there.  Winchester is far enough away that we can afford a nice home, but close enough that we could come to DC without too much of a drive.  The homes were really really impressive!  There's a great medium sized home we should be able to afford.  If we only had an extra...$100k down payment, we could have a really really really nice home! :)  Then again, we don't really need 4500 sq. ft.  Not yet anyway.  

On friday we had gone to LA-Z-Boy and bought a new sectional sofa.  It's great.  It's large, soft, and very comfortable.  It was delivered this morning, bright and early, and we've been lounging on it since.  It's so nice for Amanda and I to both be able to stretch out comfortably.  There's a Chaise lounge on one side and a recliner on the other.  It's great!  We love it already.

We're back to work tomorrow, but luckily it's only a 4 day week.  We don't have plans for new years eve yet, but I'm happy to have new years day off.  It will be nice.

That's about all.  I hope the weather stays warm!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

JMB

Holiday party season!

Good morning!

Not much has happened since my last post. We're back to the daily grind of work after our nice vacation. I'm quite busy at work, actually. The end of the quarter is next biweek, so I'm going to be swamped pretty much every day until then.

I do have one small break, tomorrow is amanda's office holiday party. We went last year and it was quite nice. Good food, drinks, and atmosphere. This year the location has changed but it should still be very fun. It's in an even fancier place than before, in fact, gentlemen can't even enter without a jacket! Granted, since it's the holiday party, everyone will be wearing suits/tuxedos anyway, but still, the fact that dressing up is a requirement for simply entering says something about the attitudes of this locations normal guests. :)

I think we may put up our Christmas tree this weekend too. It's after thanksgiving, after all. We're still not 100% sure what we're doing for Christmas, but we don't think we'll be traveling. I think we're planning on having guests over for a nice warm meal. It'll be fun, we did the same thing last year.

That's about it. Work and sleep, that's my general schedule. Actually, sleep is even hard to get. I've been having problems falling asleep the last few months, not quite sure why. I should go to the doctor, but I've never been known to frequent medical offices. I suppose I should be more responsible now that I have a wife that depends on my well being. That's another topic for another day. :)

Take care, and have a nice rest of your week.

JMB

Thanksgiving trip!

Hello, hello.

Happy belated Thankgiving! We just got back from our holiday trip back to MI. We spent the entire week back home with family. It was very nice to relax, eat great food, be with family, and not have to worry about work.

We ended up driving, instead of flying, so that was fairly tiring. We made great time on the way home, only taking about 9.5 hours total, however, on the way back to DC we hit traffic and it ended up taking a bit longer. I really hate traffic. I don't really understand it. We spent approximately an hour in Pennsylvania going between 0-20 mph. Come to find out, there was a single car pulled off to the right side with their flashers on, changing a flat tire. Perhaps 200 meters ahead of that, there was a second vehicle off to the left side, flashers on, apparently also changing a flat tire. As soon as we passed the second car, the traffic completely lifted and we were going 70+ mph again. I couldn't believe it! An entire hour because of two cars, which in their defense, weren't in the way at all. It was sickening how fast the cars picked back up after we passed the two stopped cars.

Anyway, enough about the agony of traffic.

The trip itself was great. We made several trips between my mother and my wifes mother's house. That trip is about 1.5 hours, and we seemed to make it almost every single day. We spent a lot of time in the car for this trip! It was worth it though, spending a lot of time with both of our families. My mother made thanksgiving dinner, and we had the in-laws over to join us. That was nice. Dinner was great, though we forgot to serve the cranberries, which I look forward to each year.

We picked up our wedding photos during our trip as well. We ordered a bunch and they turned out really well! I'm pretty excited. We'll need to spend some time making a wedding photo album/scrapbook. I'll probably have to buy a ton of frames in the next few weeks as well, as we decide where in the house we'd like to show them off. Unfortunately, we don't have the digital rights to the photos (yet, I'm hoping we can work something out with the photographer) so I can't share them online. If we're able to get the digital copies, I'm hoping to post them online so everyone can enjoy them! They really are beautiful.

Today was back to work. It's hard getting back into the swing of things, but the day's going fairly quickly. Busy busy! The end of the quarter is in about 3 weeks, so I'll be quite busy until then. At least staying busy makes the days go by fast. :)

That's all for now!

Stay warm!

JMB