I'm Alive!

January 17, 2011 9:09 pm

It's been two years since my surgeries, and I really think that everyone should get to celebrate that they're alive every year. It's so much fun! (It has been argued that this is what birthdays are for, but I think it's different. Feels different to me, anyway.)

So the anniversary of the second surgery was on Saturday, and we decided to go out to dinner to commemorate the occasion. There's a local Italian place called Strizzi's that I've been wanting to try, plus Kyle won a gift card at a work party last month. It was decided! We walked around downtown Livermore while we waited and then got to sit at a tall table (I love tall tables!). The food was really good and we sat around saying things like, "Two years ago I couldn't have eaten this food, since it's definitely not a clear liquid diet," and remembering how my awesome friends and family got me through.

It was a good evening.

It's a Christmas blog!

3:15 pm

Kyle and I went to my family's, in Frisco, TX, for Christmas this year. It was awesome! We played a lot of games, including Guitar Hero...

GH tiny
...Mario Kart...

MK tiny
...and the New Super Mario Bros. (Colton and Christopher had a great deal of fun throwing each other off of cliffs.)

play tinyWe got to meet Miles, Christopher and Jenny's 8-month-old son. He's freaking adorable!

miles tiny mom and miles tinyOn Christmas Eve, we played a Christmas Family Feud game that was a ton of fun. I only wish I could remember what had just happened to make them all look like that:

game tinyNow, a couple of pics from Christmas Day: I'm wearing the robe Kyle's mom made for me (now I can stop stealing Kyle's!) and switching out my old, dying watch for the new one Kyle got me.

robe tinyHere's Kyle with his new apron!

apron tinyWe're still trying to figure out how best to hang the set of wind chimes my parents got us, but I'm totally stoked about them.

While we were home, I also got to see Melanie, which was great (even if the picture isn't)...

melanie...as well as go through all the stuff my parents had of mine and sort out what to keep and what to trash. Kyle had a lot of fun reading from my journal from when I was 10 or so and making us all laugh at the silliness therein, but this is me tying on an old pair of pointe shoes.

shoes tiny
The holiday was also the occasion for new family pictures. We weren't sure what we were going to do, since the original plan was to do them outside in the park, but it was raining and freezing that day. The family ended up setting up a really nice area in our kitchen, using brown sheets as a backdrop. I don't have the ones taken by the photographer yet, but here's a cute one of Miles and Maddox, taken the next day.

maddox and miles tiny
We got to spend a wonderful 9 days there with family before driving back here again. We took 3 days to drive out, but we were racing a storm on our way home, so we did the return trip in 2 days. That second day was crazy: we had sunshine, fog, snow, rain, and hail! Obviously, though, we made it home safely. It was so good to see everyone while we could, though.

Baby Burro

December 18, 2010 3:36 pm

We're crossing Arizona today. We detoured across Route 66, taking the scenic route through Oatman. Just before town we came across some Christmas trees:

IMGP4030a

I include the car and surrounding area just to provide a proper sense of the middle-of-nowhere-ness of the location.

Then when we got into Oatman we had to wait for the daily gunfight to clear the road. So while we waited we got out and bought some kettle corn and watched the baby burro:
IMGP4036aThat basically made the scenic route worth it.