Christmas 2008 Overview

Merry be-lated Christmas!!! I hope everyone had a splendid holiday! As my three blog followers may have noticed, I have been somewhat absent this month, but for good reason. As usual, it has been a hectic holiday season, so rather than give the play-by-play updates, I'm going to give you a little overview. We'll start with my tree (shown above). Isn't it pretty? The gold, green, and real peacock feathers are this years addition, along with the green sparkly leaves.Here's our mantle. There are simply three stockings because the hangers spell "Joy". Don't get any ideas.

One of my coworkers and I baked these beautiful homeade cinnamon rolls so that we would have (cheap) good tidings to give everyone in our office. They were delicious!
Classic. These are the finalists from the Redeemer Youth Christmas party ugly sweater contest. Beautiful pose. (David, on the right, won.)This is what your mantle looks like at Christmas when you have a lot of kids. And when I say a lot, I mean at least 12. Plus spouses and grandchildren. The Tardy's had a Christmas party for our small group and an apartment complex at their house.

Aren't these cool? I made one too. This is also from the small group Christmas party.
A couple in our small group are getting married in a few weeks and we threw them a wedding shower at our house. It was lots of fun, as you can see.
And my second (or third) cousin-in-law, Cary, made this beautiful ham for the shower. I was impressed.
We had a Christmas Eve meal with my mom's parents and some of my mom's side of the family. This is Mimi and Papa, whom I adore.
This is my mom, her sister, and their cousin. They giggle like little schoolgirls when they get together.
We then proceeded to have a 5:30pm Christmas Eve dinner at Andy's grandparents following our 2:30pm lunch at my mom's. Here's some of the ladies from his side of the family: his mom, me, my sister-in-law Anna, and my sister-in-law Shannon.We spent Christmas day with Andy's brother Jason, shown above. It was fun and festive, as is apparent to all from the juggling...

And the instrument playing by my husband...
And I even got to play dress-up with my niece, Hannah.

These are simply little snippets from the month. It was a busy month, but lots of fun!

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

Andy brought to my attention today the beautiful lyrics to this traditional Christmas tune that I have never noticed before. Here's a few of my favorite stanzas:

"And in despair I bowed my head
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.'

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep"
'God is not dead, nor doth he sleep'
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.'"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this as a poem shortly after his wife had been burned alive and in the midst of the tragedy of the Civil War. The first Christmas after his wife was gone, he wrote in his journal, "How inexpressibly sad are the holidays." With the ringing of the Christmas bells, he was once again reminded that, "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep."

May God comfort those who are "inexpressibly sad" this Christmas and remind them that he is ever watching over his children. And may he grant us the grace to remember this in times of suffering.

Merry Christmas!!!

Fall '08 Perspectives

For those of you who have been praying for our Perspectives class, I would like to say thank you SO much! Tonight was our last night and it was a wonderful class. I really believe that we will see a large chunk of these students go overseas to bring the gospel to those who have never heard it. Continue to pray for these students, that the Lord would give them perseverance in this vision.

She's pretty much amazing.

This, dear friends, is my niece (my brother and sister-in-law's baby). She is about 3 months old now and she's wonderful. The sad thing is, my brother and his family just moved back to Temple which means they are now 5 1/2 hours away. Before they left, I reminded Addie that I am her favorite auntie and that I love her so, so, so, so, so much.

She's beautiful.

Other Random NYC Pics

Here's a few more pics from NYC for you all to enjoy.

At the Brooklyn Bridge.


The Michael Jackson midget man doing the "Thriller" dance at the subway at Union Station. Amazing.


Andy, Nikki, and I at Phantom of the Opera.


With the lego Star Wars guys at FAO Schwartz. (Brian, you need to show this one to Stephen.)


And the last two are obvious - at the Statue of Liberty and the David Letterman Show.

Fun Times in Greenwich Village.

As you can see, I'm slowing posting our NYC pictures. Since Andy is a folk music fanatic, we decided to spend a day in Greenwich Village in search of all the old folk hot spots. Here's the highlights...

I love Central Park.

It's been awhile...

I don't know if I have anyone that follows my blog regularly. Well, I take that back. I did notice a month or two ago that Google added a new feature on blogspot where you can become someone's "follower" or something like that. Sad thing is, I have only have one follower.

So, to Jordan: I'm sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been terribly busy and haven't had a chance to. I hope you won't abandon me.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some fun stuff here in the next week or so.

The Late Show with David Letterman

Tomorrow Andy and I are headed to New York City, Lord willing. We booked our plane tickets a few weeks ago and have been looking into lots of fun things to do while we're there. One thing we thought would be fun was to go to one of the late shows. Our first pick was to see Conan, but they didn't have any tickets for him and we didn't want to go try to get standby tickets the day of. So, that leaves David Letterman.

Here's how it works: you submit an online request for tickets. If they have any available, they will call you close to the time you're wanting tickets and let you know. You then have to call a number and answer a random trivia question to get the tickets.

The only problem with this scenario is that Andy and I pretty much never turn our TV on, so we know little to nothing about the David Letterman show, making it difficult to answer any trivia question.

Here's Andy's email to me about how it all went down. It cracked me up so I thought I'd share it with you:

"She asked me how often we watched the show and I said MAYBE once a week. I had been watching clips online today, so I figured that was ok, right?? She asked who watched it most and I said we probably watched it the same. I think she was going to give me the option of having you answer the question. Anyways she said I could have no outside help and the question was, 'what color is Alan Kalter's hair?' I had no idea and I was trying to find it on Wikipedia and she told me it was a bright unusual color. I finally googled his name and clicked images, and it was orange and I got the tickets."

So, Wednesday at 4:30PM, we're going to be sitting in on the taping of the David Letterman show. Assuming my research proves me right, Tom Brokaw, Vera Farmiga, and Brad Paisley will be on the show. Andy is planning on wearing his cowboy hat so that we might be spottable on the show. And I will probably be bundled up because they supposedly keep the studio at 58 degrees!

You'll have to tune in and see if you can spot us!

Christopher Columbus, I love you.

Normally there aren't perks to working at a bank. Contrary to popular opinion, banks in 2008 stay open past 4pm. And I only get two weeks of paid vacation a year. But, one perk to working at a bank is Columbus Day - the holiday that no one else celebrates. In celebration this year Andy and I and our good friends Ben & Beth took a fun road trip to Alpine, TX.

We enjoyed the art galleries in Marfa:
We had fun dinners:
Andy played at a little bar in Alpine called Harry Tinaja's with our wonderful friend and amazing banjo player, Billy Faier:
We hiked at Big Bend National Park:

And we hung out at Billy Faier's place, enjoying some wonderful true blue folk music. I need to add that Beth and I made dinner on the spur of the moment (literally) with the few random ingredients we could find on hand at Billy's place. It was quite the adventure.
Check out the light box that Billy made in the 70's. Apparently he made a whole traveling display's worth of these. Isn't it awesome?

By the way... If you are a Dave Van Ronk fan, you need to know that Billy Faier taught him the song "Mr. Noah".