Turning a New Leaf

Well, it's a new year, and a time to start posting more regularly. Hopefully I can do better this year than only writing about once a month :)

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I'll try to do a quick recap in pictures of all of December...

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I called Stephen to come pick me up one night after I finished either a rehearsal or performance of my play, and he said he had a surprise for me in the car and that I couldn't get mad at him. I get in the car and find a big dog sitting in the backseat!!! Apparently there was this dog running around the parking lot at Star Video all day so the employees (probably instigated by Stephen) brought him in and put him in the back room. By that time the Humane Society was already closed, so Stephen offered to take the dog home for the night and take him over there in the morning (not the first time Stevo has taken in a stray--he has a soft spot for animals).

So we kept this big guy for the night, which meant Shadow had to stay in our room with us, which also meant we didn't sleep very well (the cat gets a little crazy at night). Stephen took him over to the Humane Society and they were able to scan his microchip and get all his info. His name was "Blue" (which totally suited his quiet, sad-ish personality) and his owners had already reported him missing. We were relieved that he had a home that wanted and missed him (so we didn't have to give him to the pound and feel bad about not keeping him), but we were kind of sad to see him go. He was a really good and sweet dog.

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Here's a picture of me from the play. It went really well and it made me happy (as always) to be on stage and feel like I did a good job. Three of us were nominated to go compete at the regional festival, but our director only wanted to actually have two of us compete. One guy and myself have already competed twice and we both were kind of ready to be a partner instead so our director left it up to us to decide. So Colby will be the nominee/competitor and I'll be his partner. I'm really excited!! I make a much better partner than the one to hog the limelight (not that Colby does that). So we'll go to Wyoming in February to compete and hopefully do a little bit better this year than in the past. Colby and I work really well together, but we've never been able to be partners for the competition because we've both been nominees. So I think our chances are a little better doing it together!

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Stephen and I flew down to Fallon as soon as we finished finals (it was the most haphazard packing I've ever done...I literally had to just throw stuff in a suitcase because we were in such a hurry...and my obsessive personality had a REALLY hard time being ok with that!). We went over to Sacramento with my parents for a couple days to visit two of my sisters and their families. That was so much fun...I loved seeing them all again and having time to just hang out and visit and relax. Here's Nancy and Tyler, who is such a big boy for his age (he's only about 1 and 1/2, but he looks like he's 2 or 3)!!! He was a cutie!

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We spent a couple days with my parents and got to spend some time hanging out with my other sister and my brother and their families. More fun family time...lots of laughing and relaxing. Benjamin loves to play the "take a picture of me making a silly face" game, so we did lots of that, and I played too! Here are some of our silly faces:

Sarah is so adorable!!! I just kept wanting to hold her and give her kisses. Now her hair is long enough to have two little pigtails, which just makes her even cuter! Here she is playing with "Papa's" lips: And here she is playing the piano...maybe she'll follow in Auntie Susan's footsteps:
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Stephen and I celebrated our 2-year anniversary while we were down there!! He took me out to dinner (Mexican--our fave) and we bought each other new shoes because we were needing them badly!

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We also spent a couple days with Stephen's parents. We visited with them, had dinners with the Achurra grandparents and the Van den Heuvel grandparents, and got to visit a little with Stephen's aunt and cousin. And we spent to night before we left in the Atlantis because it was easier than driving back up to Reno the next morning for our flight after being in Reno for dinner. One of the rooms got upgraded, so Stephen and I got to stay in a suite with a big whirlpool tub and with access to a special lounge for breakfast (all thanks to Grandma Achurra's free room she won)! We considered it an extension of our anniversary celebration!! Paula got me all suited up in her skis one night...it was really fun and probably the closest I'll get to skiing! I'm not a fan of being in the snow, but maybe I'll be brave and let Stephen teach me sometime.-----
We came home to have Christmas as our own little family...it was just really nice to be alone and relax together. On Christmas Eve we watched "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (why not have some Halloween too!?!?) and drank lots of hot chocolate. Here's our cute little tree and presents:And here's the traditional Christmas morning picture:Our stockings...Shadow's was filled with fun little toys that he loves, and Nellie's was filled with a huge wad of lettuce!!! She was very pleased!We spent the day lazing around and watching more movies ("Back to the Future: Part 3" and another one that I can't remember). For dinner I roasted a ham and made barbecue sauce from scratch, and we had rolls and green beans and apple juice with 7Up. I was going to make a pumpkin pie too, but I just forgot to ever do it that day. I'll have to make it some other day soon.

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We didn't really do anything exciting for New Year's Eve...just watched another movie (do we do anything else!!) and drank some sparkling cider. We had a fun time just being together, though, and it was nice for both of us to have New Year's Day off together.

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Classes started today...uggggh. I really wasn't ready to go back yet, but I guess I'll manage. I'm technically done with my AA degree, but I'm just taking two more classes (Calc. 2 and another Pych. class) so that I can get the Honors degree. I figured I might as well do more since we're here and since it gives me a job through work-study. Stephen is still trying to decide what to do about his classes. He just needs one more humanities, so he's signed up for an online Lit. class and he's also signed up for an online Chem. class so that he can get the Honor's degree too. But he might appeal to the dean to be able to use some of the other classes he's taken as the humanities credit he needs. He just doesn't really want to take 2 online classes at once, so we'll see what happens with that.

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I guess I've gone on too long already. I should probably start doing some reading for my class and maybe I'll be motivated enough to also get some housework done!