Christmas Fun

I know I'm a bit late, but I still wanted to document Christmas. It was different/hard, but not as lonely as I had worried it would be. Shawn flew home to Kentucky on Monday, so we spent our first Christmas "together", apart. I drove up to Dallas after I got off work on Monday to spend Christmas with the Timiney's. They are friends from back in Utah that I've known for the last 5 years. In the whole move down here to Austin, we had lived there with them for a few months.
Some picture highlights:

Me and Madi

Me and Ashlyn

Me and the kids

Madi, Brennan and Ashlyn playing

Me and Brennan

I got so many nice gifts from them, and it was so magical to watch Christmas through the eyes of kids. I loved Ashlyn's expressions of "Oh my gossshhh!! What I always wanted!" about--well everything, lol.

My family sent me a package that got there just in the nick of time for Christmas. Even though I'm a stinker for opening gifts early, I actually waited until Christmas morning. Mom and Dad and each of my brothers wrote me a Christmas Card. I got some Christmas Music, a quilted tablerunner, a quitled pillow, a little 3-pack of Bath & Body Works lotion, and a copy of my mom's life history that she finished documenting this year. They also sent some goodies--fudge, chocolate chip cookies, reeses pieces cookies, fudge, candied walnuts, and one of my favorite bar cookies-Hello Dolly's. Yum! I shared, even though I could probably have eaten those all on my own :) I even got to talk to my brother Jonathan who's on a mission in Arizona right now. My dad got the 3-way calling to work, so we got to chat for a few minutes.

Shawn and I exchanged Christmas Gifts after I got home from Dallas on Saturday. I was stressing about what to get for him. I had a million ideas but very little follow through. It was always either an issue of price or knowledge. He's an artist and loves artwork and comic books, but I'm not confident enough that I a) know what good art is and b) know if he'd like it or not. I settled on buying him a WWII book since he's a big WWII buff. He got me some diamond stud earrings (omg perfectest gift evah). I can't get a picture of them to post here, but they're lovely I promise you. Exactly what I would have picked out!

And on that note--HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE! 2009 is bound to be a better year than 2008 was for me. I hope it brings everyone else happiness as well :o)

small bit of happiness

I love earrings. Love, love, love them. I like long dangly ones, sparkly ones, and sassy hoops. I love ones that match my outfits, and love when people comment and recognize that I've clearly paid attention to that. Go me! I don't buy super expensive ones. I have maybe 1 or 2 pair that cost enough money to huff and puff over. Price doesn't matter so much to me as having a plethora of earring options.

I've been lazy lately and just worn studs in both of my holes just to save myself .034 seconds during my morning preparations, but I decided that just has to change. I've had a better day by far for the last two days, and I account it almost entirely to accessorizing.

Brain Juice

I use a lot of Brain Juice. I often have a hard time falling asleep at nights because I'm "thinking". Of what, you may ask. Anything and everything. Here are some of the things I'm thinking right now:

*I'm cold. My toes and my nose especially. I was going to borrow aka steal the space heater out of my bosses office since she's on vacation, but it seems like she took it with her. Rats.
*I hope I got the package from my family today. Don't tell them, but I fully intend on opening my presents early. I'll think about re-wrapping them and taking them to Dallas so I'm part of the morning madness, but we'll see.
*I hope the new clothes I bought online come in today. I know I need to do some laundry, but I swear I have 5 1/2 shirts only, and that I just rotate the days I wear them each week. Ugh.
*I can't wait to eat the leftovers I brought for lunch today. I've been in love with this crockpot chicken recipe and I've made it once a week for a few weeks now.
*It smells like chalk in my office. I think it's dust in the heater vents, but it smells like chalk
*I wish my candle wasn't burned down so far so I could light it
*It'll be sad/lonely/weird not seeing Shawn for 5 days
*I'm excited to spend Christmas with the Timiney's!

a penny for my thoughts? yes please

So I found out that my ex-husband is engaged to be married. They've been living together since he moved out last March and I actually expected it would have happened sooner than now. I wonder about so many things. Can a relationship built on dishonesty, infedelity, and lies make it? Our relationship that was built on love, trust, and God didn't.

The divorce was finalized almost six months ago. Is it really any of my business anymore? Was it ever even my business to begin with--probably not. I hate that I still consider myself a hidden fly on their life wall. I have a bad habbit of associating with people that still know about him and what he's up to. The curiosity side of me invites "news", but the emotional-moving-on side of me wants to block it. But they're my friends. I that Junior Highesque "break up by association" where you end up losing friends because romantic relationships change. I've already cut one, honestly unhealthy friendship out of my life that was too heavily involved with Spencer, and I don't want to do that again.

I don't know if, or even how to approach the few people that feed me casual news and ask them to stop. I don't want it to seem like I want it to stop because it bothers/hurts me, but I really don't want to get into this long harangue about my inner most moving on-esque feelings with them.

It finally makes sense!

So lately, I've been getting a lot of random friend invites on Facebook. They're always women in the Austin, TX network. We have no friends in common and I don't know them from Adam. So I ignore them. I've never once noticed any similar details about each of their profiles...

Today one of my friends sent me a message asking for "clarification" about something on my facebook page:

Basic Info
Interested in: Women
Relationship: In a relationship
Looking For: Friendship, Networking
Birthday: July 13, 1982
Hometown: Austin, TX
etc, etc etc.

Now said friend is a recent acquaintance of mine, but he derived from what he thought knew about me that I was interested in Men not Women. He wanted to clarify and bring it to my attention if that was indeed an error. The last time I had a relationship change (married to single), I noticed a day later that it said I was interested in "Women". I thought I must have messed something up on my side, but now I wonder if I've found some sexual preference Facebook Bug!!!

Anyhow, I had a few LOL's about it--hope you all did too. I'll be back to my old self as soon as I can log on to change it