Happy Anniversary to us

It's hard to believe that it's been 19 years (and even harder to believe that both D and I thought it had been 20 - it took my mom to correct us). It has been 20 years since we got engaged though. Either way, it really doesn't seem that long. I certainly don't feel 20 (or even 19) years older - and I periodically get comments that I don't look old enough to have a teenager. M may only just be a teen at 13, but I am quite clearly plenty old enough to be his mom.

We've had a good 19 years and decided we would renew for another 19 (as long as the renewal rights were there again then, lol). This next batch of years will see the nest slowly emptying, rather than filling, but I expect it will be just as interesting.

We had a delicious dinner out tonight and good conversation. I couldn't ask for more.

Ready or Not, here comes Christmas

And no, I'm not really ready, but I know that won't stop Christmas from coming - any more than the Grinch managed.

What is ready:

the tree is up (on Monday)

all of my packages I ordered have arrived

most of the presents are wrapped

we have menus for Christmas eve and Christmas day

What isn't ready:

I haven't found the stockings yet

the Christmas letter is half-written

no pictures printed

no cards signed or addressed

no sticky buns made

Christmas spirit is lacking

I have a lot to do still, obviously - and quite clearly our cards this year will be late - maybe they will make it by New Years...

Not dead yet...

Although my blog may have seemed dead, I'm not - just got too busy. Plus once I go a few days without posting, it just seems like I don't know where to start. I know I haven't posted since Thanksgiving - lots has happened since then.

We went to VA to visit D's folks for Thanksgiving. Best decision to split the driving up over 2 days. It meant a bit less of people sniping at each other and we could arrive at a decent time.

Came home and almost immediately the hard drive crashed on the PC. We're still eeking a little bit of data off it - it will run for 15-20 minutes so we can copy off some files. In the meantime, we got a new hard drive and windows 7. Because of this, all my pictures are still on the camera, not on the PC where I can post them. Must remedy this soon...

Last week was brutal - finals to give for D, finals to study (ha ha) and take for M and 3 projects for A. So D was late almost every night, I was trying to nag M into studying and A into working on his projects. All while baking biscotti for teacher gifts and breads for class parties and trying to fit a little bit of Christmas shopping and wrapping in there. I'm so glad that week is OVER!

We finally got a tree today. It is in the stand and "relaxing", so that the branches will fill out before we decorate tomorrow.