My Christmas wish....

My Christmas wish tonight is that next year Ethan and I will be able to celebrate Christmas like "normal" people. As in, go to a Christmas Eve service together, and spend Christmas Day with our families. Being a police officer tends to get in the way of that. That's okay, because we're just in the season of our lives where it hasn't been possible. Working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is just a part of our lives at this point, but I'd be a liar if I didn't say I couldn't wait for the day when that isn't part of our equation anymore.

However, all is not lost!

Even though Ethan is sleeping right now since he has to work overnight and then his regular shift, I have finished wrapping all of my presents, and am sitting in my living room looking at our gorgeous tree and exterior lights on the balcony and am just reflecting on the past year. It's been quite the year. A lot has happened...more than I even thought was possible in the last year. I'll do a yearly recap on New Year's Eve as is my custom, so I won't go into detail here.

So, my plan for Christmas weekend .... tomorrow morning I'll wake up whenever I feel like it. Ethan won't be here since he'll be at work. I'll make myself some breakfast and then head over to see "my" kids and give them their Christmas gifts. Then I'll come back home and watch Christmas movies until Ethan gets home... and then the fun begins...we head to Greenville, SC to meet my parents and sister! This will be literally the first Christmas Day that Ethan and I have seen my parents and sister the entire time we've been married. They're driving from Charlotte, we're driving from Atlanta...we'll probably be eating Chinese a la "A Christmas Story" but we'll all be together for a couple of hours at least. :) After that, Ethan and I will come home and open our presents under our tree and then go out to see some friends. I also plan to see "The Black Swan" at some point as well. I will probably also inhale the rest of the Christmas cookies sitting around our house even though I've eaten WAY too many of them at this point.... I really should go make myself run but I somehow don't think that this will actually happen.

The end of the beginning

This week has been quite busy! On Wednesday, Ethan graduated cum laude from Georgia State University with his bachelor's of business administration with a major in accounting degree. His parents, my parents & grandparents, and our sister-in-law traveled from North Carolina for commencement, and then we had a big party later that night at Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta to thank our family and friends that have been such a huge support and encouragement along the way. I really don't like the above photo by the way...but it was one of the coldest days in Atlanta on record, it was raining, and the person operating the camera didn't really know what they were doing. So that's the only proof I've got. :) I bought him a Halliburton silver 4" attache briefcase which he absolutely loved. He had mentioned to me years ago that someday he'd have one of them when he wasn't working as a police officer anymore...so I thought it was the perfect graduation gift.

It's been a long 4 years since he started at GSU...but his hard work has paid off, and he's DONE! With his bachelor's degree, that is.

Now we move on to the CPA exam. He begins prep class January 11th and will take one section at a time. He'll take his last section of the exam in July, and then we'll move on to applying and interviewing for public accounting positions so that he can put in the required one year of time working as an accountant to earn his CPA certification. Then....back to school for his Masters of Tax. Now you see why it's the end of the beginning. The end of the first of many steps...

But I digress. I am just so incredibly proud to be married to an amazing man who provides for us and works his tail off no matter what. He worked a full time job as a police officer and held down two part time jobs while attending school full-time and still made time for his wife and other family members and friends. He graduated with honors despite all his responsibilities which barely left him time to breathe. My husband is an amazing, amazing, AMAZING man, and I'm so blessed that he comes home to ME every day.

Christmas...and my husband's gift to me.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

I love the Christmas season.

I love celebrating the birth of my Lord and reflecting on the awesome and completely amazing love of God for us that He would come to earth in human form and live among us in squalor (compared to Heaven!) to demonstrate His love for us. If I ever have children, they will know that the greatest present one could ever receive has been given to them by a Heavenly Father who loves them more than Ethan or I ever could.

In the more superficial realm: I love the Christmas lights, the Christmas music, the decorations on people's lawns, the family togetherness, the hot chocolate...just everything about Christmas. My husband is not as "into" Christmas as I am, but when he married me he made a big effort to be excited about Christmas with me. The past two years we have been together on Christmas Day... before that, I was usually in Colorado working.

My dad was never big on decorating the outside of our house with lights, no matter how much my sister and I would beg. We had grand plans for what we could do with the lights... the grandest of which was "SANTA STOP HERE" spelled out on the roof. He never went for it, and we were always disappointed because the front of our house had such great bushes, and there was just so much potential to transform it into a Winter Wonderland of lights! I had mentioned to Ethan that I was disappointed that I never had a house with a light display to admire as a child... and he remembered. We don't have a traditional house in the sense that we have a yard, etc...but we do have a rather large balcony in a loft building here in Atlanta.

This is what I came home to yesterday.


He has a plastic handcuff in his mouth....that's what he used to secure the lights to the balcony. I guess that's par for the course when you're married to a police officer...



We live on the 3rd floor....and it's quite high. I couldn't even watch Ethan on the ladder since he was in quite the precarious position... I had no fear he would fall because he's much too sure of himself for that, but I'm a girl. I worry about the people I love. I just kept thinking about how guilty I'd feel if he fell off the ladder while putting up an amazing light display for me!

After he finished the light display, we put our Christmas tree up and decorated it with Manheim Steamroller's 1984 Christmas album playing softly in the background. He also bought me a salted caramel hot chocolate from Starbucks to sip on. For a guy who isn't that "in" to Christmas, he sure went the whole nine yards for me! I'm one blessed girl!

Las Vegas, here we come...

So, Ethan and I were spending the evening together last night, and he mentioned that he really wanted to get away together after the craziness of the holidays (since getting off work is next to impossible between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve) and before he started Becker CPA Prep. I asked what he thought of Las Vegas, and he was excited about the idea...not because of gambling, but because of the classic car museum that is housed in one of the hotels there.

It's turning out to be a really inexpensive getaway due to cashing in our frequent flyer miles for both of us to fly there, and due to a promotion that the Mandalay Bay Resort was running for suites. We have this huge spa suite at the Mandalay and I'm so excited about it... I'm a girl who definitely loves lavish hotel rooms...so to have a suite is just too cool. Everything in Vegas is over the top. So, while we're there we will do the whole walking around and gawking at the huge hotels and casinos, visit the Bellagio for the fountain show, dinner buffet, and see "O", and visit the car museum that Ethan wants to see. Everything else will be as we decide to see it whenever/whatever we feel like! :) After my birthday trip to New York, I realized how much fun it is to just BE with Ethan and randomly explore where we happen to me. It's so much more fun than a planneddowntotheverylastsecond itinerary.

I'm soooooo looking forward to it...we're flying in on a Tuesday evening after work and returning on Thursday night - this way Ethan doesn't have to take any vacation days, and I have so many vacation days it's ridiculous, so I might as well start using them! :) (I had quite a few from last year that rolled over) We're hoping to be able to take a ski vacation in March as well but it really depends on Ethan's Becker schedule more than anything else. We'll see what happens! We might end up just going to West Virginia to ski Snowshoe, we'll take what we can get. We had a trip totally planned last year but cancelled it because of what happened with Symmes since I just couldn't bring myself to go out of town during such a rough time.

Hm. I will have flown practically every month for the rest of 2010.... October I flew to New York, November I fly to West Virginia, December I fly to New York again.... and January we fly to Vegas. Good thing I absolutely love to fly! :)

New phone, new life....

I'm pleased to report that after months of telling myself (and everyone else) that I would slow down at work and take more time for me...it has finally happened. I was fortunate enough to find an excellent part time nanny (yes, that makes three part-time nannies that I now have) so I am now getting off of work at 5:30 PM Monday through Thursday. Friday nights I work late, as usual... and by choice. Since Ethan goes to sleep for his overnight patrol, there is simply no point in going home. I also will continue to have my weekends off. I'm SO excited.... I have big plans for this new schedule... the major thing being that I am going to be going to the gym right after work each day and get back into my routine that I slipped out of because of always working late and then going home so I could see my husband for a little bit.

In other news, I also finally got a new phone... my T-Mobile G1 was well loved but dying on me... and when it started refusing to charge this week I knew it was time. However, I didn't want to get roped into extending my contract, nor did I want to shell out tons of money for a phone at retail price, so I turned to Craig's List. Lucky me - I just happened to be the first one to respond to an ad that had literally been posted two minutes prior and snapped up a brand new G2 phone. I love gadgets, but let me say that I LOVE this phone. I had seen the commercials for it and been a bit skeptical about the features - namely the Swype feature, but let me say that it REALLY WORKS. It also supports flash so I can catch up on my shows on abc.com wherever I am, and the speed of it is insane. It even has QuickOffice if I need to create a Word document or PDF. Yes, I love this phone.

So, daylight savings time is tonight.... my favorite, fall back...an extra hour of sleep! So happy about this, but a little bit sad that it will be dark outside so much sooner. I am definitely loving the cold weather though... even though it's supposed to jump back up to the 70's next week. I guess that's just Atlanta for you!

My birthday weekend recap....

Cheers! I'm 30 at last....

My husband loves me so well. It wouldn't matter if he hadn't taken me somewhere - he makes me feel special and loved, without fail. The thought that he puts into everything that he does for me is always evident. Last year he surprised me with a Dairy Queen birthday cake and a jacket from my favorite store, and we had a low key evening at home. I just want to be sure that everyone knows that I don't expect or require a lavish and extravagant birthday in order to be happy. That's not what I'm about.

Anyway, I got home SUPER late on Thursday night from work, and was so tired... I collapsed into bed at 12:30 and just prayed I'd have the strength to make it through Friday. I had been informed that we were leaving on Saturday.

Wrong.

Ethan started poking me and I opened an eye and saw that my clock read "6:00".... I don't have to be awake until 7:15, so I was not pleased at this somewhat rude awakening when I'd only gone to bed 5.5 hours earlier. Those of you who know me well know that I like my sleep. I grumbled something along the lines of "Why are you doing this to me? Go to work, leave me alone....I can't believe you would do this to me...." and then Ethan flipped on the light. I sat up in bed and glared at him about to ask (and not politely) why he was robbing me of 75 minutes of sweet, precious sleep.... and he announced, "We're going to New York City, you have thirty minutes to pack." Boy, was I ever awake then. He handed me a Nike backpack and informed me that was all the space I was allowed for packing purposes. I was slightly flabbergasted but managed to pull it off, and we were off to the airport....

We landed, took the M60 bus to the subway in Queens, and then took the subway down to the Financial District, where he had booked us our room for two nights at the absolutely amazing Gild Hall. It was SO cool... and perfectly located - right down the street from Century 21, which is my favorite store, and right in the area of Manhattan that is nice and quiet on the weekends. We had such fun exploring and walking everywhere just for the fun of it with no agenda. He surprised me that night by taking me to Mercat, where Phillip & Irene were waiting for me for a birthday dinner with tapas and LOTS of sangria... oh, it was so much fun. After dinner, we headed to Max Brenner's in Union Square for some decadent chocolate desserts and then bid each other goodbye.

Saturday we spent more time exploring and then Ethan surprised me with tickets to the off-Broadway show, Stomp. He remembered that I wanted to see it and had never managed to find the time... I always ran out of time whenever I was there or forgot to buy tickets before going, and so it just never happened ... the last ten years! It was so special that he remembered how much I wanted to see it and that he bought the best tickets in the house.... it was such a wonderful show and I highly recommend it. The percussion was so awesome, and the cast was absolutely hilarious, which I was not expecting. The show is 2 hours long with no intermission, and I would definitely go back and see it again! After the show we headed to Chinatown since Ethan wanted to see it, and we ended up eating some food there which I actually ended up liking. Then we walked around more... we walked for over 8 hours straight and were totally exhausted when we made it back to our hotel after a late night dinner at Havana Central which is one of our favorite places in Union Square...their empanadas and sangria are soooo good.

Sunday morning we went to the Brooklyn Bridge and then headed to the West Village to check out John's Pizza.... so delicious, and worth it... then we topped it off with gelato from Grom, and made our way back up to Queens to get the bus back to the airport. It was such an awesome weekend, and I will never forget how much planning and time Ethan put into the trip. We made such wonderful memories there...I can't wait to take another getaway weekend!

October at last....

Ahh, October at last.

3 more days until Baby S is one. 11 more days until E is 2. 17 more days until I'm 30.

This weekend will be full of cake baking and icing... Baby S gets a little mini-cake with the #1 on it, E gets an Elmo face cake, and F is getting a little soccer field cake so he doesn't feel left out. I'm excited to work on the cakes, and I will definitely post photos!

PS - the photo I included in my blog post today was one that was taken at our photo shoot that I mentioned previously. I absolutely LOVE the photos that we've gotten to see so far. I'll probably post my favorites once we get all of them back in another week or so!