New Year's Eve

Well, it's New Year's Eve! We had a big surf and turf dinner of steak and lobster with homemade french fries tonight. I don't like lobster or even steak that much, but I did eat a small piece of steak. Having studied lobsters, I don't think I could get myself to eat one even if I liked the way it tasted.

I have to say the lobsters were pretty cute. I felt bad that we were about to cook them.

But as we dunked them into their steamy demise, I couldn't help but think that what sucks for them, is a yummy dinner for my family.

It's a fitting thought for the New Year I think. With the end of every year, or chapter in our lives, comes a new year and bigger and better things.

I'm certainly looking forward to 2009 and a fresh start! And when I figure out exactly what I'm going to do with that fresh start, I'll be sure to let you know! ;) Until then, I do know that it will definitely include blogging, so keep an eye out for many more posts to come!

Wishing you all a safe and happy New Year! I hope 2009 brings you health, happiness, love, laughter, and good times with good friends!

Oh the joys of car ownership!

We are still at my parents' house enjoying a nice, relaxing vacation. Today, both my parents had to go back to work so we planned on getting our inspection sticker on my car. We left my parents' house around 11:20 am, hoping to get it in before the mechanic went to lunch. We get to the place, wait 20 minutes because someone else's car was in on the machine, only for the guy to tell us that their inspection machine just broke. Great! What a waste of time!

So I call up my dad and ask where else in town we can get a sticker. We head across town and arrive at the second garage at 11:53 am. Unfortunately, they inform us that their mechanic goes to lunch from 12-1 pm. At this point, my hubby is pretty irritated, but there's nothing we can do about it and it's lunch time so I decide maybe my hubby will be a little less grumpy if he gets some lunch in his belly.

We go back to my parents', eat some lunch and arrive back at garage number two right at 1 pm. Now, there are 2 cars in front of us though, so we wait. Finally, the mechanic pulls our car in. Less than a minute later, he informs us that there's a new Massachusetts law and that our license plate is too faded. Since he hadn't started the rest of the inspection, he told us to go to the RMV and turn in our plates to get some new plates and then he wouldn't have to give us a rejection sticker.

At this point the hubby is livid! I'm laughing because I know there's nothing we can do about it. So we head to the RMV, only to pull up to the door and see that apparently it has moved! We drive back across town to the new location and low and behold they are closed for lunch from 1-2 pm! I can now see fire in my hubby's eyes.

At this point it was only 1:20 pm so we drove back to my parents'. I left the hubby at home since he was still such a grump. My father left work and drove with me down to the RMV at 2 (in case they gave me any problems switching the plates) and of course the line was out the door! We wait and wait and finally get the new plates (and at no charge!)!

I screwed in the new plates and headed back across town to the second garage. Now there are 3 cars in front of me. I wait and wait and wait some more. Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, they pull in my car and at this point I'm expecting something else to go wrong. But no, it passed and I got a sticker! It's about time!


I paid and got the Hell out of there!! I arrived back at my parents' house at 3:07 pm, 3 1/2 hours after I left orignially! What a way to spend a day, but I guess it just comes with the responsibilities of owning a car!

Merry Christmas!!

It's a day late but Merry Christmas everyone! Christmas Eve and Christmas are always REALLY busy for us, so I didn't have time to post but I wanted to share a few photos.

We spend Christmas Eve at my Gram's house. There's always a ton of food and we exchange gifts with my mom's side of the family. This year was great because 2 of my cousins have kids now. It's a lot of fun to experience Christmas through a child's eyes again.

No matter how old we get, my parents still go all out at Christmas! Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

Presents that weren't there when we went to bed are piled under the tree when we wake up.

And there's always a huge Christmas dinner, complete with fancy linens, china and all!

After dinner, we exchange gifts at my hubby's mom's house, then we go up to his memere and pepere's house, then we go to to my great great aunt and uncle's house. So it's a very long day!!

But despite the long day, we had a great Christmas this year and are blessed to have the family we have. The best part though was that my soon-to-be brother-in-law who is in the Air Force was able to come home and surprise everyone! It was so nice to wake up Christmas morning and have him there with us :)

Christmas Goodies

I spent all day today baking. I didn't finish and get in the shower until 4:07 pm!! I made 4 different kinds of cookies (sugar, chocolate chip, snowballs and double-chocolate snowquakes) to fill 3 tins as gifts, then I helped my mom make a 5th kind and some homemade chex mix. Usually the best part of baking is enjoying what you made, but since I'm giving all my cookies away I couldn't really do that. I did, however, test each kind. I couldn't give the cookies away without making sure they came out alright now could I?! ;)

They were all pretty yummy if I do say so myself!

Fancy Pants

Little miss spy has a nice pair of jeans that she likes to wear. Last week, she mentioned that she thought there was something wrong with them because they zipped and buttoned on the opposite side as all her other pants. I, of course, looked down at my jeans and she was right. Wednesday night was our work holiday party so we all got dressed up. The first time I went to the ladies' room I noticed that my black dress pants zipped on the opposite side too! Little miss spy was in meetings most of the day so I forgot to mention it to her until yesterday when we were leaving. She got all excited and began to explain!

Apparently, she mentioned the situation with her jeans to The Schwarz and he knew why this was! It was such a cool trivia fact to find out, that I just had to share. Apparently, if you go back in time, wealthy women used to have someone else dress them. So the zipper and button was on the opposite side to accommodate a right handed person that was dressing someone else! Fancy women's pants have retained this for some reason, even though women tend to dress themselves today. This also explains why men's pants never have the button and zipper on the opposite side because they always dressed themselves!

I thought it was a pretty cool fact to know, so a big thanks to The Schwarz for sharing his knowledge on fancy pants!

Do you think God gets annoyed?

So there's this person that really annoys me and little miss spy. This person is nice enough really, they just have some really annoying habits. You have to know that little miss spy and I talk about just about everything, it's not that we are gossipy people really. So we IM back and forth about this person's annoying habits occasionally and have a good laugh.

Yesterday, we were having a GOOD laugh at this person's expense. (I promise we really aren't mean people!) So I jokingly commented, "We are both going to Hell." Little miss spy's response was priceless. She said:

I doubt it.
Even God's probably annoyed.

LOL This, of course, made me laugh harder! She then suggested I write a post contemplating whether God gets annoyed. This was all in good fun and we then headed off to our work holiday party. Well, I think God was annoyed at me for that conversation and even thinking about writing this post because the party seemed like some kind of punishment! So here I am writing more of a humorous summary rather than a contemplation. Don't want to get myself in any more trouble with the Big Man! On a more positive note: The food was good last night! So that's always a plus! :)

Snow!

I looked out the window this morning and there was snow on the ground!! Granted it was only a dusting and the rain was pretty quickly turning it to slush, but it was snow! My parents have had snow for a while now (which makes me very happy because that's where we'll be for the holidays and there's nothing like a white Christmas) but we've only had rain so far. Seeing the snow instantly put me in a good mood! I am so ready for Christmas and to spend some time with my family.

Anyway, I got to work and one of my co-workers mentioned that she had to shovel behind her tires! We definitely didn't have that much where I live. I'm also spoiled and have these 2 magic buttons. I aim them out the window, press them at the same time and VOILA! my car starts for me. I let the car warm up for about 10 minutes before I have to leave and all the snow and ice melts right off. It's pretty wonderful if you ask me. :)