What have I been up to, Part 2

 Whoops, it's 2017. Happy New Year!

I want to do my annual yearly review, but I feel like I should tell you how the rest of my year went first. So here we go...

September: I did the Big Bang Mud Run again! This year's went a lot better than last year. The run was organized way better and this time I didn't make the mistake of doing the 12k. I did the 7k with my SIL and we finished in 88 minutes!

The whole gang at the mud run

We love our visits to the farm. 

Astrid and her cousins at the cornmaze! 

October: My birthday was pretty quiet this year. I debated inviting a bunch of girls out to brunch or something, but instead I just watched Conference at home and had a friend come over to watch with me. Oh, I also made an impromptu trip back home for Thanksgiving. It was quick, but fun. And Halloween was great! For my friend's Halloween party I dressed up as a witch and did green-face and everything. I love dressing up. And then Astrid dressed up as Cookie Monster and we had so much fun trick-or-treating at the mall, and then doing trunk-or-treat and then doing a quick trip down our block with dad in the evening. It was a very busy day.

On the road to Lethbridge

Cookie Monster! She was so cute! 

November: I got so many nosebleeds this month, it was stupid! I was even paranoid that I would get one at work and start bleeding all over a patient. Thank goodness that never happened. Me and some girls did an art date and it was so fun. It was good to get the creative juices going again, even though it was just recreating something someone else has already done. Ooh, MOANA also came out this month and Joe and I actually went out to the theatre to see it on the second night it was out (we don't go out to the movies anymore because we hate Cineplex so this was a big deal).

Nosebleeds. Blech. 

Arting! 

December: December could have gone so much better. It was still good, don't get me wrong, but with my calling at church and making preparations for Christmas down south, I was so done. Astrid's birthday was a quiet affair. We had originally wanted to do the sleigh rides they had going on just outside of town, but we were in the middle of a particularly cold snap that week, so the sleigh rides had been cancelled due to -40 weather. Yeah. Ridiculous. So instead we had some friends of ours with a little girl Astrid's age come over for cake and we let the girls play afterwards. And then of course we spent Christmas with my family and it was such a good visit. Astrid went ice fishing for the first time, we got to see a bunch of family we haven't seen in a long while, and we alllllmost got to see our new nephew - except we left a week too soon. Bummer. I guess we'll just have to make another trip to see him!

We went sledding just before the cold snap, thank goodness!

Astrid and her birthday presents.

Our family Nativity Pageant. All the second cousins!

Grampa was so proud to have Astrid ice fishing with him. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we'd caught any fish! 

How to decorate a ghetto Christmas tree

There are three elements to creating a ghetto Christmas tree:

Laziness, stingy-ness with a dash of creativity.

Step 1. Be too lazy to buy a real tree and too stingy to buy a full-size tree. Heck, be too cheap to buy a tree, period. Just pick up a branch from your back alley. I stole mine from my mother and it was even missing one of the stand legs.

Step 2. Be too cheap to buy real decorations. I have two ornaments on my tree that are actual, real ornaments. Everything else is just made up. Don't have garland or lights? That's okay. Do you have long, necklaces? Those will do. Don't have a Christmas star? Do you have yellow construction paper? That'll work.

Voila! A Ghetto Christmas Tree!

This is my tree. I wish I had a proper camera that worked (hint, hint, Santa) so you could see it in its full, ghetto glory. But alas, this will have to do. Is that a candy necklace you spy? It certainly is! Who said your decorations couldn't be edible?

Christmas = Awesome

H'okay, so holidays. Mine was awesome. Naturally, because I am awesome. And Johnny was home for the whole thing so that made it even awesomer.

It was the big dreaded first Christmas with the in-laws, but I've got some pretty good in-laws, so there was really nothing to worry about. We chilled with Johnny's family for Christmas eve and Christmas day. We watched movies, ate good food, had good times, it was great. My favourite present would have to be the booties Johnny got me. They are warm and fuzzy and wonderful. And they have grippies on the bottom! Awesome!

There was only one small downside to my holidays and that would be the part where I got the stomach flu while Johnny and I were visiting our friend on her family ranch. We were supposed to do all these awesome ranchey activities like quadding, riding horses, playing with cows, you know, all the sort of stuff farm kids do for fun. But instead I head to go spewing my brains out and doing you-know-what out the other end - it was not a pretty sight. So we ended up watching most of the first season of Heroes pretty much the whole time while we waited for my disease to pass. Our hosts were so great though. I was babied just like I would have been had I been home with my own parents. Johnny was great through the whole thing too. Every time I barfed he was right there holding my hair back and wiping the remnants off my face when I was done. How romantic.

New Years was pretty rad. We went to the YSA New Year's dance incognito because we weren't technically supposed to be there because we are no longer single. We're real rebels. The dance was pretty fun. We went over to our friend's house after to play some games and drink some radioactive kool-aid and we ended staying up way too late to be functional at church the next day.

All in all, Christmas was awesome, New Years was good, and what really made my holidays great was the fact that Johnny had 19 days off of work to spend with me. Now it's back to the grind stone and I am all ready to go for another semester.

essays should be allowed to be written in blog format

There are so many things that I love about the Christmas season: the snow (in moderation), visits with the family, the food, and the music. But every silver lining has its cloud and that cloud is finals.

Right now what is killing me is the final essay I have to write for my english class. If essay writing were like blogging, I'd be set. But it's not, and that's why I just spent the enitre afternoon and evening in the library only to get two paragraphs down that I will probably end up re-writing tomorrow. On the bright side, I've been doing some really interesting readings for my research topic, but that doesn't make the writing any easier.

Anyway, enough of my complaints. I'm sure that if you have any other university friends that's all you're hearing from them as well. I just have a question to ask of you, my readers. Is it sad that today is the 16th and that I've only just set up my Christmas tree this morning?