bugsii

Today, we drove down to Cincinnati to celebrate Jess’s birthday.  We brought her her favorite pizza, adriatico’s, all the way from Columbus and she got a Wii and Wii Fit!  We spent the rest of the night hanging out and catching up.  Good times!  There are a few more pictures on the piictures tab!

This morning, Dan and I woke up and exchanged our gifts to each other.  My most exciting gift is an updated Garmin running watch!  Dan’s is most likely his new server (tech geek that he is)!  Then, we got ready for the day and for Jess, Jeff and kids to arrive.  Here’s the scene before the living room was a war zone of paper and boxes.

Look at all the loot!

Diego amongst the gifts.

Dan and I ready to unwrap.

When everyone was there, we all tore into our gifts.

Grandma helping Katie and Cole.

And Ray and Pete took lots of pictures.

Smile!

And then we played.

Katie's new DS.

Uncle Ray helping Cole.

The adult kids playing a riveting game of Catan!

Now, the house has calmed down a bit and I am listening to Pete play his new Beatles’ Rockband.  My new favorite song is Come Together (any song that uses the words joo-joo eyeball and toe-jam football are definitely my style).  Oh, and check out the piictures tab for the officially sanctioned pictures from today (many more than I included here).  Merry Christmas!

Dan and I slept in pretty late today.  We didn’t really have too much to do, which was nice.  I ran, read my book, made some soup, and crocheted a bit.  At 5pm we went to church and then everyone had a nice meal together.  Dan has been pretty excited about Christmas and he decided that tonight we should all open one gift, so we did.  I got some purple ear buds!  Dan got a book he wanted (The Invention of Air), Joyce, an ornament, Pete, a Wii game, and Ray, magnets from Japan and Graceland (woo hoo!).  We got just a little taste of Christmas and we’re all ready for tomorrow.  Now, we watch It’s a Wonderful Life until bedtime.  Merry Christmas Eve!

This evening everyone (except Pete, who’s not feeling great) loaded into the car to head to Clifton Mill to see an obscene amount of Christmas lights.  It’s a quaint little mill near Yellow Springs, Ohio.  Apparently, it takes a team of 8 men 3 months to put up 3.5 million lights.  The official lighting is at 6pm every evening.  We got there a bit early and walked past the toy trains, went through a little shed full of antique toys, looked around the gift shop, and went through another small building full of Santas.

Uncle Ray in the Santa room!

At 6pm, they started some music and lit up all 3.5 million lights.  Then, the lights on the covered bridge were synced to Siberian orchestra song.  It was pretty cool.

Dan and I in front of the covered bridge and the "waterfall" of lights.

Grandma and Katie in from of the mill.

Afterward we went to Young’s Dairy Farm to get burgers (or black bean burgers) and ice cream.  Just a few more minutes until Christmas Eve!

This morning I completed my final long run in my half marathon training.  Next weekend, I’ll head to Memphis for the big race.

Tonight, we had our second Thanksgiving dinner with Dan’s family and I am stuffed beyond belief once again (maybe I shouldn’t have had that second round of dessert).  Here’s a nice picture from this evening and there are more under the piictures tab.

Poppy and Katie

Back in Cincy for a quick trip.  My niece Katie was baptized this morning.  Here she is at the brunch afterward with her cousin Ava.

Katie and Ava

Today I ran 11 miles.  Only a few weeks until the half marathon in Memphis.  I ran around Pete and Joyce’s neighborhood and it was such a beautiful day.  Then, I did some school work and mailed a manuscript for a short piece that I have no doubt will be rejected.  But, I mailed it and we’ll see.

Tonight, Dan’s sister and her family came over and we all had dinner together.  Joyce made delicious ravioli lasagna and peanut butter pie.  Katie was passing out a second dessert as Joyce was cleaning up:

Mmm, plastic food!

The rest of the night I spent doing crafty things like making a Christmas card and photo books.  Much fun, but I think I’m going to call it a night and get to bed early.

I used wordle.net to create a word cloud of my blog.  It lets you put a URL in for analysis, and I was hoping it would be a word cloud of my WHOLE blog (all year and half of it), but no, it’s just a word cloud of the last ten entries (what’s visible now on the site).  Still, it’s kind of cool.  What it does, is take the most frequently occurring words and they appear larger, the less frequent, smaller.

Check out the two largest words: think and work.  Go figure.  But, I’m in my Cincinnati home tonight, so I’m going to take a bit of a break from both of those things and go eat some Doritos.

This morning, Dan drove me to Dayton, where I had to do a presentation for ODE.  I was nervous, but I felt pretty calm and it went very well.  I may be beating this stage fright thing after all.  While I was working, Dan was figuring out my computer problems.  He managed to clone my hard drive and then replace my hard drive with the clone, so as of right now, my computer is working beautifully (knock on wood).  I was able to get a paper done and read some articles for class, and I feel much better.

Tonight, we are at Dan’s parents so Dan can work on his joysticks.  We made our own pizzas for dinner and they turned out pretty good.  Now, I’m tired and dragging, which is why this blog post isn’t so great.  My apologies.

Yesterday afternoon, Dan and I headed down to Cincinnati for his “surprise” 30th birthday party. I say “surprise” because he knew something was going on, just not what exactly. Joyce and I had been planning a secret party at an arcade full of classic arcade games like Streetfighter and Ms. Pacman! We rented a room in the back that had two TVs that you could also hook console games up to. Ben and Matt snuck down to help us set up games. Joyce made all the food and I bargained with the owners to stay open 30 minutes later so that we could get the UFC fight on one of the TVs in the back room. Oh, and my friend Molly even made this awesome cake shaped like an arcade stick!

Streetfighter cake!

Everyone showed up around 8 and Pete brought Dan at 8:30. Dan was surprised (or so he says) and we all had a good time running around playing games, eating pizza and cake, and watching the UFC fight.  Here’s a not unfamiliar scene from the evening.

Dan and Ben on Streetfighter II and Jeff on Ms. Pacman

There are lots more pictures of our friends and family having fun if you click on the “piictures” tab.  Happy 30th birthday to my distinguished husband who just so happens to still love video games!  I love you honey!