well it appears i am once again playing hooky on blogging, however it has been for us [just as the rest of the world] a very busy holiday season and as a result blogging was moved down on the priority list rather considerably. however, i fully intend to try and earn retribution with the best of my ability over the next series of posts and try to get you all caught up to the new fun and exciting things going on in our lives at present. i do apologize for the lack of communication, but hopefully you can all understand and forgive me. if not, well, thats okay too. ;]
ill admit that when i sat down to write this post [seeing as its lunch time at work and all, lol] i honestly had no idea where we'd last left off and had to do some re-reading of my own to find myself. in an attempt to save you all some of this, ill quickly recap for you.
basically, i last posted on dec. 23rd, and karen and i had just partially moved into the house. wed had a bumpy first morning with the plumbing but after the second night in the house we'd gotten some of the kinks worked out and things were going much smoother. we'd also moved completely out of the storage unit the weekend before and were about 70% moved out of the apartment. as i said before, it was dec. 23rd, so christmas eve was the following day and at that point we'd decorated for christmas for the most part at the house and had gotten the majority of our presents for each other wrapped and under the tree as well as sending off all of our presents to tx for the fam. we'd had some advancement on the roof and it was looking pretty good so far, and the temperature here had been quite cold to say the very least - making moving and life in general that much more fun, haha! i think thats probably enough at this point to catch you all up and from here we can get back to the story telling.
[tuesday | december 23, 2008]
well ill b frank and honest with you all, its been some time since ive last posted and theres no way im going to remember all the details exactly and times exactly but i can touch on as many of the milestones as i can possibly remember for you.
on the evening of dec. 23rd, i know that karen and i did recieve a couple of presents in the mail and were able to wrap those and get them under the tree. other than that, i couldnt say for sure. i believe there had also been some work done on the roof that day, but again... its been a while. lets skip to christmas eve.
[wednesday | december 24, 2008 | christmas eve]
well like a lot of unlucky people out there, karen and i both had to work on christmas eve. however, i only had to work a half day. why, you ask? well, in the morning i had arranged with the dodge dealership we bought the truck from to finally go and get that drivers side mirror installed. theyd gotten it in on monday i believe and we were excited to get it on, so i was taking a half day to go and get that done. considering they were only open during regular business hours [the same ones i work] i was going to have to take off from work to get it done no matter what, so why not christmas eve? so in the morning i dropped karen off at work and then got on the highway for the hour drive out to the dealership.
[ - let me add to this that i just remembered that the evening of dec.23rd proved to be an extremely icey event. in the afternoon that day it started drizzling and the temperature had dropped enough that by 4-ish the roads and sidewalks were a mess. we had to salt our sidewalks at work and everyone was very worried about the roads. karen and i made it home okay, but we did encounter some icey conditions that we're glad we'rent too bad for us. however, there were terrible conditions all over the tri-state area and there were reports all over of accidents and people sliding off the roads, and boy it was not a great way to start the christmas festivities.-]
well on my way, you would not believe the number of cars littering the sides of the road. there were cars, trucks, you name it, [some even piled high with packages] all just abandoned on the side of the road or in some ditch half over-turned. it reminded me of something out of one of those environmental catastrophe movies... luckily the weather had warmed up considerably since the night before [somewhere in the low 40's] and the roads were no longer icey at all. the weather however, was less than ideal. the entire day it rained. sometimes it drizzled, some times it poured, there were times it let up and was just barely coming down and youd think it was going to clear and then a torrential downpour would come along and dash your hopes... it was a dreary day. so anyway, i drove to the dealership in the rain, in awe of the roadsides, but with no problems whatsoever. when i got there i ran inside to try and stay as dry as i could and the guys met me at the door. theyd been expecting me and were ready to go as soon as i got there. so i handed over the keys and waited for about an hour as they replaced the mirror and decided to repair some seals on the windows that they noticed were loose. by the time i was ready to go it was about 10:30 and i got back out into the rain and on the road home. the drive home was again un-eventful although i did see a few wreckers attempting to pull up-ended vehicles from ditches on the way back. right about 11.15 i was getting close to the oh/ky border and my phone started buzzing. it was the wife looking for a status report. so i told her about the morning and how fantastic it was to have a mirror on the drivers side and we discussed the rest of the afternoon.
well i was planning to go home and relax for a while and have lunch and then go to work around 1 so that my half day would end at 5 when karen was getting off work. well apparently people in her office were leaving early so she was thinking we could leave at 3:30 instead. well that meant i didnt get to go home and relax for a few hours, but it was still do-able if i went straight to the office. so i headed into work on got there right about 11:30, perfect.
well work was slow, very slow. half the office had taken the day off, and the work load was very light to say the very least. well after 2 hours i was bored out of my mind and there were even less people still in the office, so i said my goodbyes and ditched work early. at first i was looking forward to going home to take a nap, but when i got there i changed my mind. the house was a wreck. we'd moved everything from the apartment and storage unit into the house pretty quickly, and while a lot of it got relocated to a suitable place in the house, a lot didnt. so i decided as a christmas gift to my wife id do what i do best, organize. i spent the next 2 hours cleaning, straightening, and moving furniture around the house to try and get it suitable for a proper christmas in the new home. im pretty pleased with how well i did to be quite honest. i was able to clear out the parlor almost completely, the only remaining items were the christmas decor, a coffee table, a couple of chairs, and a stack of boxes in one corner that were full of books [that were going to be living in the parlor permanently and were waaaay too heavy to be lugging around all over the house for vanity's sake.] the dining room got cleared of almost all the clutter which included a very large amount of remodeling supplies that we'd just been keeping there temporarily while we worked on projects. so all the paint, paint supplies, base & crown mold, and other various material clutter was all relocated upstairs to the "craft room" [heh, just for you cassie] and i also moved into place our cabinets and hutch that were to store a lot of our kitchen items. and lastly, in the kitchen i was able to unpack a few boxes and move a lot of stuff into the cabinets and hutch and clear out some of the clutter in the kitchen as well. well by the time id done all that and rearranged furniture a little i was worn out and it was time to go get karen from work anyway, so thats what i did.
so i picked her up right on time and my wife was very pleased to see me [as always] and even more excited to get home and start the christmas festivities! well, i dont condone lying to your spouse, but for the sake of keeping the surprise i told her id just taken a nice nap for the last 2 hours and when we got home, wow, her eyes lit up. she was so confused, lol. she noticed almost immediately that everything looked different [and almost immediately is really really good for karen to notice anything, lol!] but i could see the confusion of her face. "wait, what happened here, did you clean?! i thought you took a nap, you did this and took a nap??" haha, i love her so much! after explaining that i hadnt taken a nap at all and that was just a lie to keep the surprise and about 30 seconds for all of that to register the look of confusion faded and i got big hugs and kisses. hehe, shes really cute sometimes. and my early present was a big success. she was very excited to have all the clean space - organizing is definitely not karens gift, lol! [so much so in fact, that her nickname around the house is quite often "path-blocker" because she is constantly moving stuff around to get to whatever she needs or to move things from one room or the other and 100% of the time will put everything directly in what would be the path of movement. a lot of time shell actually stack things in a semi-circle around a door opening and when you walk through it youre immediately stopped by a wall of objects, lol! the best part is that she doesnt even do it consciously! lol! shes really adorable, and very much a path-blocker...]
well that evening we had a great time making grandma's special recipe party mix and some home-made spiced rum while we watched some nip/tuck and relaxed a little for the evening. we had agreed that christmas eve and christmas day were going to strictly be relaxation days and give ourselves a break from all the projects and remodeling for at least 2 days. [oh and also, the mix turned out amazing! its a christmas tradition in my family, we have it every year and my dad always does a great job making it. well this year i wanted to share that tradition with karen and im so glad it turned out sooo good. id never made it before but it ended up being an especially good batch and karen loved it! shed never had it before, but after she got used to the spiciness of it shes totally hooked. i think we're actually making another batch tonight because weve polished off the first one, lol!] well we got entranced by our nip/tuck episodes and ended up going to bed after midnight after losing all track of time, haha. it was a great night and the rain still pouring outside was nice and soothing on the skylight and put me to sleep very quickly.
well... with that... my lunch break is over. if i keep going at this rate, this series is going to have a lot of parts until im caught up, lol! ill try and get more in on the next round, but for now ive got to go! merry christmas eve!
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