Life with Gling

I’m anxiously awaiting 4:00 when I can leave work and begin Christmas vacation! Only 30 minutes to, but it seems like an eternity. Today’s been really good though. The other counselors surprised me with a birthday cake, so that was cool. The sugar buzz from the icing kept me going for the first half of the day. We also went to Subway for lunch, which was equally as yummy as the cake. My mom called me in the midst of my delicious turkey sandwhich to wish me a Happy Birthday. She’s awesome. Seriously, I have the best mom in the whole wide world! The is the first birthday I’ve ever been away from home. I’ve never not opened presents with my parents right when I woke up that morning. So that was a little hard to deal with, but I have an amazing hubby who makes it all worth it. We’re celebrating my birthday tonight, but nothing too fancy. Christmas has a way of quickly depleting the check book. I think we’re going to see the new “Focker” movie. We’ve both been excited about it, and it’s playing here in Greenville. We have to finish packing tonight and get our car loaded up for the trip back home tomorrow. We’re opening our Christmas presents together in our apartment tomorrow and we’re going to have our own little Christmas meal. We thought that would be special since it’s our first married Christmas. Time to start new family traditions and whatnot. Tomorrow after lunch we’re heading up to my parents house…where we’ll be staying for the next week. Christmas Eve service is tomorrow night, followed by the ritual dinner at Olive Garden. Christmas day will be packed with many family visits and good times. Should be a great holiday season! Merry Christmas and God Bless!!!

Ah, Christmas is nearly here. Spent my last evening shopping yesterday. Wal-Mart was super crazy, but I made it out in one piece. Vandalia’s photo lab is cruddy…so don’t get your pictures reprinted there unless you have to. (Just a word of advice.) I brought home some yummy food for Jared and I to eat for supper…and we finished watching “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” I had big plans to finish baking Christmas goodies and to wrap presents after that…but needless to say….I fell asleep right around 9:00. Jared woke me up around 1:00 and carried me to bed. So tonight I have to finish up all of those things I was going to do yesterday AND clean the apartment so we can leave on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow’s my birthday and I’m turning the big 2-3….yay! One more day of work and then it’ll be time for vacation. Woo-hoo for paid vacations! (Ahhh…being a part of the adult world.) Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

What a fun weekend! Friday night Jared and I snuggled up and watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” I love that movie! Saturday we got up and packed for the rest of the weekend. We headed to Champaign for Eric Bogle’s wedding. (Eric was in a band with Jared for several years….good ol’ 20th Ave.) Anywho…the wedding was beautiful. I find myself getting even more sappy at weddings now that I’m married. It makes me think of our wedding day. Yay for being married to my best friend! Anyway, the reception was a blast too. We sat with the Shandley’s and got to see Jamie too. Lots of fun dancing and acting quite silly. We headed to Bloomington after that, and stayed at Steven and Norma’s house. We were up early for church, where we saw my parents. I love Vale…I can’t wait to move back to Bloomington so we can go to church there again. It’s so great to go back and see so many people and get tons of hugs. After church it was time for Tolan Christmas at Uncle Bob’s and Aunt Melinda’s. Their house is amazing! Seriously, one of the co0lest houses I’ve ever been in. It was so good to see Jared’s family again. Every year I feel more and more welcomed. I’m not even shy when I’m there anymore. Dinner was yummy and the presents were fun. Each family (or person) brings a Christmas decoration of some sort and then we draw numbers for them. This year as we picked out our presents, we were allowed to steal them from other people. It was a lot of fun…even though I lost the cool snowman I picked out. We ended up with some cute ornaments and a really neat angel. We also got some bite-size candy bars with our pictures from last Christmas on the wrappers. Tom and Joyce are super creative with the camera. (The take our picture with some sort of silly hat on every year…this years will take the cake I think.) Anyway…we finally made it back to Greenville around midnight…crawled into bed…and somehow awoke this morning. Now…back to work I must go. Bye!

The week’s been going pretty well so far. Last night we had a Christmas party at Dr. Pepper’s house (yes, that’s my boss)…and it was a lot of fun. Lots of Christmas goodies…of which I ate too many. I think I ate like 6 truffles, and could have easily eaten more. Drool. I made a trip to Value City last night…and didn’t buy any clothes! I was so proud of myself. I definitely had 2 pairs of shoes in my cart…and reluctantly…I put them back. I got a few Christmas goodies for some family gift exchanges we have, and some baskets to put more Christmas goodies in. Did I mention that Value City is open until midnight during December?! I was definitely in there for like 2 hours…but that usually seems to happen when I go there by myself. Anyway, I finally made it home and wrapped up some more presents and drank some chai. Jared’s been busy with finals, but he’ll be done after today…which is sooo exciting! Anyway, back to work I must go. Adios!

I can’t believe we’re already half-way into December. How crazy is that?! This weekend went rather well. I had to help with scholarship competition on Saturday, so that required getting up before the sun…but I managed. I took a 2 1/2 hour nap after it was all over. Later that night Jared and I attended the faculty/staff Christmas dinner potluck. It was super-delicious! We stuffed ourselves and came back home to watch movies and be lazy. Sunday morning we attended another new church. It had good music, but we definitely didn’t feel as welcomed. This church-hunting business is getting tough. I just wish Vale (our church in Bloomington) was here in Greenville. We had dinner with my old roommate Janet though…and that was great. I can’t believe she’s moving back to Arizona this week. My other roommate, Nicole, is moving back to Texas too. Reality is always setting in. The rest of Sunday Jared was working on his final projects of the semester. I sat around home and watched sappy chick-flicks and then cleaned up the apartment. I might miss this apartment…but I’m soooo excited to be moving! Anyway, I’m gonna finish this up and watch some tv before I hit the hay. Oh yeah…ate at this great Mexican restaurant in Centralia with Jenn tonight…good stuff!

Not much going on in the Smith household tonight. After setting the oven on fire (some melted cheese from yesterdays toasted subs)….we finally settled down to a nice supper of ham and potatoes. As usual…we watched countless hours of VH1 and their obsessive documentaries, countdowns and specials. I love that channel! The new show “My Coolest Years” cracks me up. We watched the one on “metalheads” tonight. Now we’re sitting in the computer room blasting Metallica. (We’re nerds!) Jared’s playing air drums and head banging. He’s sooooo cool. Oh, Jared just informed me that he’s been playing a mean air guitar as well. I have to get to bed decent time tonight because we have scholarship competition tomorrow morning and I have to be at the office by 7 a.m. Yuck! Not only that…but I have to wear a business suit all morning too. Oh…good news today…we’re officially moving towards the end of January. Our superbulous new apartment is only a few blocks away…and we’re soooo excited about it! We’re going to leave the Southland Apartments forever! Yay!!! Ok…off to bed I go.

Yesterday wasn’t too exciting. Just work and a trip to Wal-Mart. Work’s been pretty stressful lately. Lots of visits and lots of things to do to help prepare my students who are coming in at semester. So I’ve been evaluating transcripts, collecting housing forms, putting together class schedules…and oh so much more! Regardless, I love my job. I am so thankful to have this job and to enjoy it. Sometimes I wish I were still in college…but then I wake up and realize how much I don’t miss writing papers. That 90-some-odd page thesis I wrote senior year of college is more than enough writing to last for at least the next 10 years. (Or until I go back to grad. school.) Anywho…not much left to write about, so I’ll get back to that job I love.

It’s been one of the best weekends ever. I was a little bummed to be back in the office this morning. Friday night Jared and I stayed at the Hilton in St. Louis. He decided that we should just get away and enjoy a night somewhere else by ourselves. It was great! We got this “Cabin Fever” package…which came with a humassive pizza, soda, and a free in-room movie. We ended up watching “The Forgotten,” which was actually pretty good. Not exactly what I expected, but worth watching. We got to swim and sit in the hot tub for quite awhile too. I haven’t gone swimming in such a long time. It was a blast! Anywho…skip to the next day. The lady at the front desk was feeling generous when we checked in and gave us free breakfast passes for the restaurant there in the hotel. So we most definitely enjoyed that. After check-out we packed up the car and headed to the St. Louis Mills. We got a lot of Christmas shopping done, but we still have a lot to do. When we were in line at the food court…this girl in front of us looked just like Christina Aguilera. I highly doubt it was her, but it was pretty funny to think that someone would take the time to look just like her. She even had that nasty 5-color frizzy hair thing going on. Jared and I agreed that she was wearing far too many clothes to be the real Christina. We also met up with Jenn and her husband Jeremy. (I work with Jenn.) That was fun too. Jenn and I ditched the hubbies and went to the scrapbooking store. Anywho…this is getting quite wordy and I should be getting back to work now. I hope everyone else had a super-great weekend too!

Yay! The weekend’s finally here. I’m just about to leave work, but I thought I’d post a note first. It’s been a good week…lots of sunshine and good times at work. Went to a Stamping party last night. It was lots of fun…even got a few new stamps and inks. Tonight Jared and I are headed to St. Louis for a couple days to get away and celebrate 6 months of marrige. I can’t wait! It’s going to be so nice to get away by ourselves. We have to get some Christmas shopping done while we’re there too. Have I mentioned how much I love Christmas?! I can’t wait to send out the Christmas cards, start baking cookies and all of that other stuff. More updates after the weekend.

I can’t believe that it’s December already. Not only is Christmas almost here, but that means I’ve been graduated for half of a year, married for half of a year and have worked in Admissions for half of a year. How crazy is that?! On Monday night Jared went to Prof. Cole’s house to watch Tron. I, however, stayed home and decided to start putting up the Christmas decorations. It was really weird to not be in Emden putting up the decorations with my mom. To make myself feel better, I watched our tape of Christmas cartoons from the 80’s. (Mom and I would always watch them when we decorated.) So fear not, Charlie Brown’s Christmas and Garfield’s Christmas got me through it! We don’t have nearly as many decorations as our parents do…but I still think our apartment is looking rather festive. I was so excited to put up our very own Nativity Scene. Last night we put up our Chrismas tree. We decided to get a fake one…only because we’ll be gone off and on through the season…and we didn’t want to worry about watering a tree. The tree actually looks really good…as far as fake trees go. It’s very full and pretty tall. It looks so pretty with all of our ornaments hanging on it. My sister-in-law had made us several ornaments out of our dried wedding flowers…they look really great and make the tree that much more special. So needless to say, the Smith household is officially ready for the Christmas season.