This One's For You, Billy

So now it's been almost 3 months sincy my last post--AGAIN! So much has happened and I feel like my life has been so crazy lately, though I'm sure an outsider wouldn't see it that way at all. At the end of Oct./beginning of Nov., we went on our first cruise and, I must say, I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone! As I was mentioning to our friend Billy this morning, a cruise is wonderful because you don't have to plan anything, rent a car or find a hotel, you just get on the boat and that's it, it does everything else for you!!! We had a wonderful time on our Holland America boat, The Westerdam: we went to their private island in the Bahamas, to Turks & Caicos for our first foray into the amazing world of snorkeling and to Costa Maya, Mexico for some sightseeing of real Mayan temples. We were also supposed to make a stop in Grand Cayman (and, as it turns out for some more snorkelng since we switched our excursions) but the weather was pretty bad and the captain deemed it dangerous for us to get off the boat. We had a brief hello and farewell to the island, that was it. In Costa Maya, we were actually the very first boat to come back to the port since it was devastated in a hurricane last year--the shop owners were so desperate for us to buy their wares (and pictures with monkeys, which Michael did) that it was sort of sad. But, we did buy several souveneirs and presents there, so I guess we did our part. Oh, and I had my first karaoke experince on the ship, that was interesting. for anyone who wants to know. If anyone wants to see pics of our vacation, let me know and I'll put some up....

In November, we started making some home improvements! We hired a great company to paint the rest of the rooms in our house (9 rooms total that we didn't have to do!) and I love the colors we picked out. I'll do some befores and afters later. We also finally got our fireplace repaired (actually, that migh have been in Dec., I can't really remember right now)!!! We had to get a masonry cap put on and some gaps filled. After that, we had to get a chimney sweep out (insert Mary Poppins music here) to clean everything, there was a lot of debris and we weren't sure when or if it had ever been cleaned out before....it's likely that it hadn't been cleaned in quite some time since the sweeps found a rusty hammer in the chimney during the cleaning. How that got there I'll never know. My parents gave us an early Christmas present in the form of a beautiful new fireplace screen so we (and by "we", I mean Michael) ripped out the horrible old '60s brass one, then we (and by "we", I mean I) painted the exposed brick to match the rest of the surrounding brick and voila! An updated fireplace! Gorgeous!

December was busy, busy, busy! Ever single weekend we were doing something or going somewhere, which explains why we had to get our Christmas tree the Sun. after Thanksgiving and put up our lights the first weekend in Dec. (Michael is awesome for all the hard work he did--the house wouldn't have looked nearly as festive without all of his help!). I hosted (hostessed?) not only my work party but also a smaller PB party. The Banfield party consisted of about 16 people and 10 dogs, while the PB party was about 10 people strong with lots of wine! Both Christmas parties were very fun, each in their own way. For Christmas, we switched our families this year and again went down to Wimberley to be with Michael's family: I always have such a good time down there with good fun, good family time, good games and good pirate-themed murder mystery dinner theatre! And even though I missed being with my family this Christmas, I had so much fun in the Hill Country that I wasn't too sad for too long. New Years Eve was quiet for us this year: I had to work during the day and was so tired at night that I just wanted to sleep. We did end up making it until midnight (I kicked Micahel's butt at Scraable!) and Sam and Max enjoyed drinking some Ballatore Asti. We, on the other hand, hated it.

That brings me up to January! We just finished another big home project: replacing our old, sliding glass patio doors. As Michael jokes, you could predict the weather just by standing near the doors, they were that drafty! So, we had 2 sets of french doors installed this week: one from the den to the patio and the other set from the office to the patio. They look so nice and they're just the kind I wanted. Plus, we have screens now so we can open the doors whenever we want--somehow I'm the only one of the four of us who hasn't run into a screen yet...

My New Years resolutions are pretty simple this year: I'm trying to be more healthy this year by eating better, cooking at home, eating more fruits and veggies and drinking more water. I wouldn't mind losing some weight but mostly I just want to be healthier. I also would like to get my back in better condition so I'm not constantly in pain. Oh, and I'd like to make my house more of a home, maybe with another little addition later this year but that's a long way away and I still need to do a lot of mental preparation before I'm even willing to discuss that. So here's to 2009: may it be a healthy, happy year for all my friends and family and we'll see where this year takes us! Cheers!