It's been a super long time since my last post, so my bad, but things have been crazy with work and Christmas and everything so eeek! I figure I'll just post a bit about what I've been up to over the holidays and hope that covers things pretty well up till now!
Anyone who knows me knows that I. LOVE. CHRISTMASTIME. I love the way it makes people just a little more generous, just a little happier, just a little nicer (albeit having a detrimental effect on their driving abilities). I love being with my family and friends and celebrating all the blessings we've been given in our lives and in each other. I love the decorations, the movies, the food, the music, the festivities. This year's season was a little short because Thanksgiving was so late, but I still dressed up the house, dug out all my Christmas socks and red bags that I only use this time of year, and partied down. Last year Christmastime was insane because it was two months before our wedding, so I really tried to go all out this year.
I kicked off the season with a super fun trip out to Chicagoland to visit a good friend from college. I don't see my friends from school nearly often enough which sucks bigtime, so to the extent that I make New Years' Resolutions, I'm considering that one of mine for 2009. Anyhoo, she had told me about this crazy Christmas festival out there the first weekend of December, so I cashed in all my American Express Rewards Points to get a cheapo flight out there and headed out for the weekend.
A little background on this trip: last year sometime (I think in the summer), I had this dream that I was with my buddy out in Chi-town and we were taking this Christmas house tour, around all these beautifully-decorated Victorian houses, and then we walked through huge, cute shop that sold all these gorgeous gifts and fun toys. I told her about this dream and that's when I heard about the Geneva, IL Christmas festival. I am telling you, this festival was almost exactly like my dream, which is beyond bizarre, since I very rarely have prophetic dreams. But if you ever get the chance, you should go. Geneva has all these cute stores and restaurants and the Christmas Festival is seriously like heaven for someone who loves Christmas. You can go on a house tour, all the shops have sales and specials, everyone serves free cookies, hot chocolate, and hot cider (useful b/c it was FREEZING), then at night there's a tree lighting, and you can go to the candy store and watch them make candy canes (which is really cool), and then we finished the night off by singing Christmas carols by candlelight in this cute little church downtown. I'm not even kidding, I'm pretty sure Geneva is the North Pole in disguise!
Besides the festival, we had a blast catching up, watching Christmas movies, playing Rock Band on the Wii (which I heartily suck at), and to top it all off, there was actually snow out there (we didn't have any back home yet). Awesome.
Once I was back home, it was back to the grind, but that's ok...Christmastime in the office is a pretty good time. The actual workload gets a little heavy, but I'd rather be busy than not (it helps me keep my mind off all the Christmas shopping I have to do!) And, of course, December means it's time for our office holiday party. Every year we get the choice to either go out for lunch and then take the rest of the day off, or go out for dinner (significant others invited), and people pretty much unanimously choose the latter. I think it is a mark of how awesome my coworkers are that everyone brings their S.O., and everyone talks all night and laughs and gets along great. Shawn loves my colleagues and they like him, and we always have a blast whenever we all hang out outside of the office (we have a blast in the office too, but that's different.) Sitting at dinner at Bailey's Backyard in Ridgefield, next to Shawn, and across from our President/CEO and my boss, it really reminded me just how lucky I am in my job. I came into the whole thing with no idea what medical terminology even WAS, and now I'm managing projects, actually editing terminologies, and learning databases, SQL, and even a smidge of pharmacology. I've always said that coworkers can either make or break a job, and I'm so fortunate to always have had it been the former, now at Apelon and before at Scholastic. I have mentors and people who work their butts off, teach me tons, are encouraging when I'm not feeling so great, who are patient with me when I'm stupid or screw up, and who generally make this dinky little drop in the wide sea of corporate America feel like she belongs. Especially in this day and age, when so many Americans are unemployed, I try to never take a day of it for granted.
One of my favorite newer Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses with my mother-in-law and my sisters-in-law. It is a blast...my MIL buys these kits that come with all kinds of candy and stuff, and we spend a night making a mess and designing gingerbread houses. Mine usually have a theme: last year I made a blue and purple house (our wedding colors), the year before I made what we ended up calling the Gay Pride House (because I used all the rest of the colors that everyone else hadn't used and it ended up being a rainbow), and this year I did a Bucknell House:
Last year, as I mentioned, Shawn and I were completely cracked-out on wedding planning by December, so this year, since things were much calmer, we decided to have a Christmas party. We don't have the room to really have a big dinner party, so we thought we'd do an open house instead with drinks and hors d'oeuvres. We invited a bunch of people, including various friends from high school and college, our siblings and their fams, and our parents, and it was a blast. Shawn and I always have fun cooking for other people and I would have to say that one of my favorite things in the world is entertaining. The house looked really nice and Christmasy, we had a fire going and candles burning, Psycho Cat was locked up in the garage (she's kind of a liability when guests are around, especially when said guests include our nieces and nephew), and we got tons of people even though it had snowed all day and by 4:00 I was having a panic attack that no one would come!! Luckily I was wrong, and almost everybody showed up, stayed for the whole time, ate all the food (so we didn't have any leftovers, yay!) and we had a great time laughing and hanging out and catching up with everyone. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I was too busy trying to be the perfect hostess! Here is one of Shawn's bro's fam hanging by the tree:
I managed to use some vacation time and was able to take off almost two weeks for Christmas, partially because my company is awesome and decided to give us all the day after Christmas and the day after New Years Day off since they were both Fridays. So, I was off starting the 23rd and going until January 5. Christmas Eve Shawn had to work, so I mostly stayed in and wrapped and worked on the handmade presents I made this year (I quilted placemats for my sisters-in-law, made beaded Swarovski crystal snowflake ornaments, and also made wedding photo albums for our parents so I was a busy bee!) Then we went to Mass with my parents in Brookfield, headed back to their house for dessert, then went home to bed to rest up for our first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs. Clifford!
Christmas Day was super fun...in the morning we went to Shawn's parents' house for a BIG breakfast (seriously...it was a LOT of food) and presents with Shawn's family, then we headed to my parents' house where, bless their cute hearts, they hadn't opened a single present without us! We had dinner there, and of course watched Christmas Vacation with the whole family. Christmas is not complete at the Annis household without a viewing of that movie, since we're the real-life Griswolds! Here I am Christmas morning with Shawn's family (that is me and Heather on the bottom after probably a few too many mimosas):
Santa was very good to us this year...movies, board games, tickets to Celtic Woman at Radio City for the 3rd year in a row (yay!), cookies, jewelry, CDs, and lots more...our families really spoil us! Shawn got us tickets to see Cirque du Soleil's Wintuk show at Madison Square Garden the Monday after Christmas, and dinner at Rolf's which is this awesome German restaurant in Gramercy where every square inch of it is decorated for Christmas:
And of course we did our obligatory Christmas tourist walk around NYC. I swear the windows at Saks were some of the best ever this year! I am pretty sure designing those window displays has got to be the coolest job ever.
So, that's about it in a (very big) nutshell. It was a great holiday season for us, and I hope for you as well. God bless everyone for 2009 with health, happiness, and success, and thanks for reading! I promise I will be a more prolific blogger in the New Year!
