Living Out Loud

One my beautiful friend Hillary just had her 30th birthday. The 3-0 is a pretty big milestone in anyone's life. So we and a bunch of other beautiful friends headed down to a local club The Madison for some serious dancin'!

It was the funnest night of my life!!!! Happy 30, Hillary! May the next ten years be even more fantastic and may I be able to share many of those years with you!

Getting together with my friends and to go out dancing was an amazing feeling of awe and amazement. We're powerful and we're hot. It's nice to remember that every once in awhile. So here's to living out loud!

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Our anniversary and my attempt at making krispie rice treats....

Archie and I did it; we made 8 years this last week, December 12! You look back and think about where you came from, what you've done together over the last 8 years, and where you're at now. Basically, each year has to be taken on its own. And as it has added up over the last 8, I think we're doing pretty good. Some years have been tougher than others but we always manage to make it through. Here's to another exciting year!

We had a fantastic time with some new drinks at Murphy's and chips and salsa and then we walked up to the Roof fancy shmanshy's buffet!

The marshmallows were old and stale in my defense! Stale marshmallows do not melt nicely; they ooze and gooze into a sentient blob and run like a vole into the nearest sink....I thought it was going to attack! My next batch went a lot smoother! Whew.

Gabe and the Holidays!

This is the first year that Gabe has been able to really get excited about this awesome time of the year! He loved helping with the ornaments; the bottom has very concentrated areas of ball ornaments! The only setback was having our Christmas tree stolen...(we picked ours out a couple of months ago and when we went to pick it up at the tree farm someone had already taken). But we got another one and it looks fantabulous...well, we forgot to look up how to actually take care of a real tree since we usually go for our pre-lit Walmart tree. So we forgot to water it and now it's dry. We are going to try to recut it tomorrow...we'll see!

Oh, we also cut out snowflakes!

Cookies have been made with more to go! I'm even planning on making egg nog and wassail from scratch this year. We even got an impromptu visit with Santa last week while at the store! Can't complain about a free 5x7 photo. We still need to get our holiday family photo taken and we're good to go!

It's been amazing to see Gabe's excitement. I remember what it was like when I was a kid. Making cookies, listening to Christmas music, dancing, hanging up ornaments, hugs, and kisses. Wondrous and magical.

Our Own Family Magic

I haven't posted on here as much as I'd like. My camera has been on the fritz, among other things. So no new pictures right now. But the holidays, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa are all upon us. I love this time of year. It's always been a magical time for me. For me it's about family and friends, making cookies and delivering them to neighbors, helping those in need (not that this is the only time of year to do that!), trying out new recipes, meeting new people, setting up decorations, and starting new traditions with my own family.

It's really amazing to me that I have my own family and I can start making this time of year magical for my own son. So even though this time inevitably brings its own set of loneliness, stress and anxiety, I know it'll still be magical since I'll be with loved ones and enjoying this wonderful and short time on this planet Earth and celebrating traditions that have been handed down since time immemorial. And that's always a reason to celebrate. May you all have your own family magic this year.

This song below expresses my feelings so well as only Tim Minchin can. Enjoy!