Well, after countless hours spent in airports and cars, too many nights not in my own bed (and the backaches to prove it), his & her’s family time, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Texas & Vegas….we’re back, and our “real lives” are about to kick back into real time.
I’ve missed this little blog, and all my blog friends…but I daresay I’m going to be a little rusty for a few days. I can already tell this post needs a re-write. But I’ve got to start somewhere, huh?
I had big plans to discuss Christmas and New Year’s in separate posts, but, well, I’m sure everyone is sick of those stories, so I’ll wrap them up in one Sunday night post and just move forward. Welcome to 2009 and all.
Christmas
For Christmas, we headed to the San Antonio area to spend 5 days with my mom and her husband. They own horses and cattle and dogs and cats and who knows what all other animals, so it’s always interesting to head out there–a little dirtier and more rustic than my day to day life, ya know? Oh, and were you aware that horses are really big, and can be kinda freaky up close? And that cattle aren’t particularly smart (and are apparently afraid of me and my camera)? And that border collies who were raised around horses and cattle can do some impressive stuff moving those animals around?
Anyway, Christmas turned out to be an interesting study in who I am. See, I was a little bummed out by Christmas this year. Oh, not gifts…despite everyone taking it “easy” this year in the gift department, we got some cool stuff, all of it thoughtful and perfect for us and really, minus one gift (yay Wii Fit!), totally not over the top.
No I was disappointed by Christmas because…well I hate to admit this but…because I’m selfish and bratty and didn’t get to do Christmas my way. I know, I know, I’m ashamed of me too, but Christmas to me means getting up in the morning, opening gifts in my jammies, with everyone still drowsy (but nursing a coffee, tea or diet coke in my case), casual and relaxed. Not at 2:00 in the afternoon, fully dressed, in a somewhat “formal” setting. But, we don’t always get to have things our way (I know, right?).
Anyway, it was interesting seeing how that disappointment colored the entire day for me. I was able to let it go later in the day (and I did enjoy myself), but it did reinforce that I’m building my own “traditions” for holidays…and whenever at all it’s in my control, we’ll do things according to those traditions.
New Year’s Eve
As I mentioned in my last post, we headed up to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve. My in-laws live there, so we don’t normally head toward the Strip when we’re there, instead sticking to their local casino. You lose some of the flair of Vegas but frankly you tend to win more…which is a good thing!
For this trip, we had tickets to see Blue Man Group at 4:00pm on New Year’s Eve. We show up, and seriously, these might have been some of the best seats I’ve ever been in…about 6th row, just off center. The audience wasn’t all that energetic, but it was still one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a really long time. There was a point where I was just laughing and laughing and I remember thinking–this is really an amazing feeling of freedom. It sort of….reset my thinking a little. Theater and musical theater has been known to do that to me on occasion.
After the show was over, the original plan was that my in-laws would head back to their local casino and we’d stay on the Strip and do the “real” Las Vegas New Year’s Eve. But after thinking about it, we decided we didn’t really care to spend a ton of money going to a crowded club, we would rather gamble at his parents casino (for cash flow reasons), and that the Strip didn’t really suit us. So we left.
Instead, we spent the evening playing craps at his parent’s local casino…and winning! It was a really really cool evening–at the stroke of midnight, the entire casino counted down, my husband and I kissed, and we were up a couple hundred dollars. Not bad for starting the night with about $40! I think we left the craps table around 2:00am, up a little more, exhausted but perfectly content with how our evening went down. (We ended up losing most of that money right back to the casino the next day, but we came home with what we left with plus a little more, so I call it a win.)
All in all, the holidays were good, time off was amazing, and I’m really excited about 2009. I’m not quite ready to go back to the real world, but if I must, at least it’s after a satisfying and enjoyable vacation!
Tags:
Christmas,
holiday,
New Year's
