Fishing for Christmas

It was a perfect Christmas this year.

To put it plainly, things haven't been the same since Annie passed away. For the first 27 years of my life, holidays consisted of: driving to my grandparents, having a massive delicious meal at Annie & Boppa's long dining table with china, silver, linens and such... with all my aunts, uncles and cousins running around. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, random Sundays to celebrate birthdays... always the same: lots of family, lots of activity, lots of food.

The past several holidays have been quite different and frankly, seemed kinda empty. Last year for Christmas, we partied with my family on Xmas eve, brunched together at our house and spent the day watching the triplets play with their new toys. This year was pretty much a repeat.

Maybe it is the creation of new traditions (in that it was a repeat year, not a first year), maybe it was the constant activity of the girls and their excitement for their new toys, rain gear or musical instruments (toys that make noise!!). Maybe it was Jackie's beautiful dinning table and all the delicious food. Whatever it was, it felt complete.



And who could possibly resist fishing from the play house pier with Uncle Joe? Somehow, all three flailing plastic fish (that would make quite the noise when 'caught' by the magnetic worm) broke by day's end... shocker.

Galoshes & nightgowns: just in case there is a torrential downpour in the middle of the night.

The Great Christmas Card Crisis of 2008

I was SOOOO proud of our Christmas card picture this year.... Made it into a lovely postcard on heavy card stock... created the messages and laid it all out. They were to say "Merry and Bright" on the front with this picture:



Flip it over, and on the left half of the card, the message "Wishing you and yours a 2009 filled with finding Joy in the little things --The Prices" (get it-- the little ornament, etc) was written in a red casual script over this picture (which was at 50% translucency so it was more of a faint imprint):

I already had the little mailing labels printed just the right size to fit-- with a green font and the nutcracker stamps all ready to go.

The post cards arrive in the mail and... much to my disappointment, the front was practically black. You could barely see the picture- even the lights on the tree barely showed. Boo. Who wants an ironic Xmas card? "Merry and Bright" ....yeah, right. So I call (took me several days to get anyone to answer when I called - i listened to LOTS of holiday music while on hold), finally get through and they say "oh, yeah, we had a dark run that day..." So we reprint them. arg.

The second batched arrived! It was Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd). I was SOOO going to get the cards out by the next day. Woohoo-- open the box up... and BAM! they are bright red. WAYYYY too much red. Yes, even red in the green branches of the tree. =( Booooo. Hands-down, MUCH worse looking than the ironic dark cards.

So with that, folks, my Merry and Bright Christmas Card bubble had been popped. No card from the Prices in the mail this year... just this post. And likely an email with the picture attached. Not nearly the same.

Our Christmas Cards aside, ours was just perfect and we hope you had a Merry and Bright Christmas of your own!!

And thanks for the Christmas Card if you sent one!! I'll do better next year...

Me Permite?

The City of Austin said "yes." After a mere two days, two hundred dollars (and a bit of luck), we got our permit re-issued. Without getting into the sorted, rediculous details- it was an exercise in inefficiencies. Nonetheless, it is done thanks to Mr. Price.

Onward!

Framers/Carpenters come on Monday to move/install doors and add a door which will make last summer's breakthrough a reality. Woohoo!

Hello New Jersey!

To Jersey and back today... I have been actively, um, NOT looking forward to this trip for multile reasons(let your mind run wild on that one) but I must say: it wasn't too terrible. The weather wasn't too bad and the meetings were productive. Sucks that the meetings ran long--ousting our shot at driving through The City, waking up at 4:30 was miserble , and we are on track for a 5 hour flight home (as a reference point: this AM flight was 2.75 hours. Return flight has had the honor of an hour ground delay and headwinds blowing against us at 150mph resulting in 4 hours on the air. I'm pretty sure I could almost be to London...

Incidentally... There is no in-flight entertainment for the way home and my computer battery is dead. In case you were counting, that=3.5 more hours of sitting on a plane, worn out tired and staring at the seat in front of me (I've already flipped the airline magazine twice-before we took off)

Thank B'geezus for my iToy or someone (me) would be UBERcranky right about now. Other than typing this post, I'm trying to figure out if I'm already too dehydrated from the day.... Or if I should just say "eff" it, and bottoms-up.

Hmm....

Never a good sign....

*bing bong* (flight attendants' voice over PA)

"If there are any medical professionals on the plane, will you please hit your call button"

Cookiethon 2008

Another memorable Christmas cookie-thon came and went... dozens of cookies baked and the neighborhood was treated with ~5 hours of fresh cookie sented air.

The night was capped off with puffs of powdered sugar falling from the sky. And that MUST have been what it was, because we all know that it never snows in Austin-- and certainly not in December. But sure enough-- freezing rain, sleet- and yes, SNOW -- fell in the ATX that night.

Office Humor

One of the funnier random things I've seen posted in the office and I finally had to (momentarily, of course) snag it and scan it for your viewing & entertainment, dear blog friends.




Enjoy it's depth, honestly and the truth it reveals...

Scary, huh?

Happy Friday! =)

Jingle, Jingle...

Playlist updated to include my *favorite* Christmas songs now.... Woohoo!

Jingle jingle could also refer to the new roof we got today =(
I'd like to say we 'could have done without it' ...but we couldn't. Our year old roof was totaled by the insurance company from the hail storm last May. (booo!) BUT - they did finish in one quick day (YAY!) BUT, they realized that the roof of the cabana needed new decking (not covered by insurance, booo!!!) BUT... I picked a new color of shingle, much darker than the old one and i like it MUCH better (yay).

Merry & Bright

Mission Accomplished! I'm feelin' it (the Xmas Spirit, that is): the house is decorated, attended a Christmas party- in Christmas-y clothes- that turned into a late-night dance party (nice...) and I even took pictures for and designed our Christmas card. Woohoo. The Holidays have officially arrived.

Tomorrow night: Christmas Cookie-thon


(that is my tree in the background...)

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas.

Friendly Reminder: It is a Small World

...too small for road rage. (This is the "Airport Story" from Thanksgiving)

road rage (noun) uncontrollable aggressive behaviour by the driver of a road vehicle, especially when caused by stress or frustration

Road rage: Babylon English-English n. act of violence committed out of frustration about traffic or driving conditions.

Road rage is the behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle, which thus causes collisions or incidents on roadways. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.

So we were heading to the airport and decided to park in long term parking over Thanksgiving. YEA for the holidays starting!! Not being familiar with that lane at ABIA, I got into the far left lane which, as it continued on, turned out to be a shuttle lane. Opps- signaled to the right, started to cross the stripe to get over and ***honk*** WHOA- angry drive to the right. WHOA- he yelled something nasty and flipped us the bird (no, we were not inverted). Unnecessary! Mr. Price and I were shocked, but laughed anyway. Really, dude. So in our shock and hysteria of laughing at... let's call him Mr. Angry, shall we?...Mr. Angry, wouldn't you know- he cut us off! Jumped over into the left lane as he apparently decided to park in long term parking too. HAHA!! Mr. Angry who wasn't okay with a signal and a slow drift into his lane totally cut us off! So we laughed even harder then made faux-angry faces at him a the Quadruple-Flip-Off (which = all 4 hands *briefly* waving at him). Bouncin'' down the road.

Awww... he slowed to get his ticket to go into parking and we wondered if we would get a good look at Mr. Angry. Nope! Though we went into the lane next to him, he hurried on through.

As soon as we get into the parking lot, we notice that not only are many lots already full... there are flaggers every 50 yards or so, waving us on. Uh-oh... we are prolly gonna have to park next to Mr. Angry... as we weaved through the parking lots the flaggers got closer and closer together and sure enough- just like at a concert at The Backyard - we were flagged into a specific parking space **right next to Mr. Angry!!** A little uneasy that he might come out swinging- but we didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

Park. Engine off. Mr. Price hops out of the passenger side and with a big grin says "guess we didn't exactly get off on the right foot, huh?" ---Here is where Mr. Angry starts to realize it is a small world and maybe road rage isn't such a good idea--- "Oh, yeah" he mutters, "guess that wasn't exactly the best reaction."

"No worries!!" I beam, "we flipped you off too, when you cut us off a few moments later" and shrugged my shoulders.

Continuing to get our luggage out of the trunk, he had gathered his and was about to walk off when he stammered, "I guess I should have known you guys were going to get over. That shuttle lane it tricky and I've done the same thing before. " We double-"don't worry/no problem-ed" him and he walked off.

This could have been the end. Oh no, not done yet.

Another shuttle pulled up but one of the flaggers yelled to us "We've got more space on this one! You two can get on here..." Of course. So on the shuttle we go with our new friend, Mr. Angry.

Loaded up and headed to the terminal: still having a grand 'ol time and thrilled for a quick holiday, Mr. Price and I are laughing on the shuttle and have all but forgotten Mr. Angry when half way to the terminal.... Mr. Angry slides over into the seat next to us.

Got to give him full props. Maybe he should be called Mr. Not-So-Angry at this point. We received a heartfelt, tail-between-legs apology and something about how "it's easy to forget that it's real people in the car as you drive down the road." He really shouldn't have behaved that way and was embarrassed, etc, etc. Bless his heart. We accepted his apology, told him it was okay and not to worry about it, then to have a great holiday.

Smooth cruise through the airport and 30 minutes later, we're seated and ready to go. Sure enough... who walks onto the plane but: Mr. Angry! He apparently saw us first because by the time we saw him and smiled, he was already ready with "yes, I figured you would be on my flight. It's a small world..." as he was turning red.

I replied with a quick, "sometimes you can make friends in the most unlikely of fashions!"

Good times.

Lesson learned.