Christmas update!

Kevin tells me that my blog fans will be quite upset if I don't post soon, as seeing as how we will be running around crazy for the next few days, I figured I would post a holiday wrap up (get it, wrap? wrapping paper? bah, you guys are no fun.)

On Christmas Eve we went to Mass with my parents and brother and then joined them, along with our family friends the Miscavages, for dinner at my parents house. Previous to this, I spent about two days in the kitchen baking desserts and cookies for the holidays and to give as gifts, so I can honestly say that our new kitchen can't come soon enough! I'm so sick of that awful old room. Here's a pic of Kev and I in our gingerbread workshop:In related culinary news, we had to make the purchase of a new fridge since ours was truly at the end of its life and our new cabinets have been ordered! Construction will begin in January.

I was also completely remiss to mention our holiday cookie bake with Etown friends, which this year took place in Germantown, Md. Sorry girls! We had a great time catching up and baking.

Anyway, after opening gifts on Christmas Eve with my family (and getting to bed at around 2 a.m.) we woke up Christmas morning to open our gifts here (taking approximately 27.6 seconds; I got tickets to see Les Mis in NYC and Kevin got his Etown baseball jersey framed) and then we headed to his grandparents in South Jersey for breakfast with the rest of Kevin's immediate family and Msgr. Martin, who conducted our wedding Mass. The rest of the day was spent at Kevin's parents house; it was nice to visit and relax with everyone!

The day after Christmas resulted in more kitchen time for me, as I was making Kevin's favorite dinner, meatballs and gravy, for his family who would again be dining with us that evening. I also had to make the famous Masciulli birthday cake, which I am happy to say turned out of the pans perfectly, even if the icing was a little thin. The whole fam was together again in the evening to celebrate Kev's 27th birthday with some singing, much to his chagrin.

Today we had breakfast with Mark and Cara Dixon and their 3-month-old, Samuel. Shortly we will be heading to Atlantic City for a TSO concert tonight and then tomorrow to York to visit with friends and family.

Whew - thanks for reading and staying up to date on our crazy lives!

Sometimes a rainy day is nice...

If you'll recall, part of the point of this blog was that I could do some creative writing. The prompt I was working on was to list 10 things you'd like to do on a rainy day, pick one and free write about it for five minutes. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a free write means that there is to be no censorship, just continual writing on a topic or string of topics, wherever your brain leads you. Here's my product:

10 things I like to do on a rainy day:

Sleep
Read
Go shopping
Cuddle up with a good movie
Cook or bake something
Clean the house
Make photo albums
Eat some soup
Call a girlfriend and catch up
Listen to the clock tick


It has been so long since I’ve been home on a rainy day, let alone have time to read a book for pleasure and not have anything else on my agenda for the day. I have a stack of books on my nightstand that need to be read and who knows when I will get to them. Gone are the days when I used to have a book with me at every lunch; I would sit down to eat during the summer at exactly noon every day and my family would laugh at me. But I would spend an hour sitting at that table, even after I’d finished my lunch, just reading my book. I would read the same books over and over, nothing special or earth shattering, just the same pre-teen stories that I felt comfortable with. There was nothing challenging about those tales, but the safety of reading them repeatedly, the knowledge of the characters and what would happen next (namely, a happy ending) is still something I find myself looking for today when I get suckered into reading fanfic on the Internet. That search for the happy ending, the tucking of that last loose end into the sunset of a story, somehow makes me feel content and safe inside again, like eating my Spaghetti O’s and knowing what was going to happen in the next chapter. I have to admit, my standards are much higher now – not all fanfic is created equal. I can’t take anything that’s missing dialogue and I’m still a stickler for proper capitalization and spelling, but there are some pretty good writers out there crawling the Web, some of them close to the real thing. I have written some fanfic myself (nerdy, I know) and although it’s been a good practice in structure, it gives you no practice in character development because you are using people who’ve been made up for the purposes of a TV show or movie.

Not too bad, but it's not going to get a Pulitzer either. Oh well, it's a good exercise to stretch those synapses!

In other news, my mom's family, the Forsters, just celebrated their family Christmas this past Sunday! Some pictures of the fam and our new cousin, Samantha Forster.

Celebrity Look Alikes

I saw this on our friend Erin's blog and had to check it out. It's hilarious because when you look at Kevin's, one of his matches is Jason Biggs and our friend Mentha always used to say that they looked alike! Technology has proven you correct, Menthie! We got a good laugh out of that one!

http://www.myheritage.com

http://www.myheritage.com

Stick a fork in me

I'm done! Well, in a manner of speaking.

Saturday was my final class of the semester, so I am happy to say that class is over for a few weeks. It's always a nice feeling and I'm finally relieved to be able to get into all the holiday tasks that I have been putting off. Today I met Lindy in Lancaster and we did some shopping at the outlets; Kevin went and got our Christmas tree so we finally have that up! It was nice to come home this evening and smell the evergreen in the house. Kevin has his final classes on Tuesday; after that we'll finally be able to relax and enjoy the holidays.

I got a few e-mails from people re: the IQ tests, so I'm glad you all enjoyed it and I hope it didn't cause any marital woes!

IQ

In class we got talking about IQs on Saturday and I have never taken an IQ test. I realize it's probably not 100% accurate, but I tried this test at Tickle.com http://web.tickle.com/invite?test=3001&type=t. I rated at a 131, which sounds about ballpark from our presentations in class on Saturday. I found this to be interesting, however;

Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind.

Now off to finish research for my presentation next week, which will mark the end of this semester for me. In addition to that exciting news, Dad was here to measure our kitchen today for new cabinets. We are looking at a major overhaul project in there for the new year, so they'll be some home improvement pics up come January!