It's Beginning to Look (and sound!) a lot Like Christmas!

I don’t know if y’all have heard the forecast for the Lansing area tonight and tomorrow and for several days after, but we are in for some storms! 

I love snow. It’s pretty and fluffy and makes all of the trees that have lost their leaves beautiful again. And it means Christmas is coming! (*EDIT* We now have about 4")

I enjoy the Christmas season so much. I have wonderful fond memories of the Holiday season from my childhood and I have more that I have made since I moved out of my parents’ house.

Everyone is always just so happy and cheerful during the Holiday season. All smiles and glitter! I know that many people feel pressured to be happy around the holidays, but I do not. I am just so damn happy around the holidays! I am almost giddy with joy. I always hope that I infect as many people with my smiles and laughter around this time as I can, without being pushy. Sure, I have my ups and downs during the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but on the whole, I bounce back pretty easily because it’s Christmas.

There are many reasons I love this season, some of them new, some of them old, and some of them are now just awesome memories of a wonderful season.

One tradition growing up was that the house did not get decorated for Christmas in anyway until the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Ever. And I loved that. I still love that. Now that I have a household of my own, I still wait until after Thanksgiving to decorate. Of course, I decorate on Friday instead of Saturday, because I am not patient in any sense of the word, but I wait. I also wait until after Thanksgiving to start listening to Christmas music.  I tried listening to Christmas music early one year and it just felt weird. Waiting heightens the anticipation and excitement.  The joy, the wonder!  I think that goes for not just the music, but the decorations as well. So, for my Black Friday shopping I braved the crowds on Amazon to download 100 Christmas songs for $5. It was pretty harrowing – whew!

Another tradition/fond memory that I have from my childhood that I love to look back on, is the annual indoor hide and seek game.  Every year, whatever leftover decorations from decorating the tree we had, lights, garland, etc., us kids would get to put in our rooms to bring a little Christmas cheer to our rooms too.  After we hung all the decorations and put our snow globes out, we would wait for darkness to fall.  Then, after dinner, my brothers and I would play Christmas Light Hide and Seek.  Basically, it’s hide and seek in our house, upstairs, with the door to the upstairs closed and only the strands of lights in our rooms to see by.  And the night light in the bathroom, but that doesn’t count.

We had so much fun playing that game. It was a great time for all.  Sometimes we would play more than once a year, if we had friends over or something. With only the three of us, it wasn’t too much of a challenge and with extra people it got a little more complicated. I remember one time I hid in the bathtub, which isn’t a fantastic hiding spot, but I took a white sheet with me and stretched it out taught so that it would just look like the bottom of the tub if you didn’t look too closely.  It worked. I loved it!  

Another time, when my youngest brother was three or four, he hid between the sink and the bathtub in the shower curtains and we couldn’t find him for a half hour! We even went downstairs to check if he had hidden down there, even though it was an unwritten rule that downstairs was off-limits. (The stairs were fair game, but not a very good hiding spot!) Little stinker. And one of the times that I remember having a friend of Matthew’s over, he folded himself up and tucked himself under the table by the phone!

Good times, good times…..

When I was growing up we would always go to the decoration Sunday at the church I grew up in.  When I was younger, I would hang with the kids while we did Christmas-y crafts in the Fellowship Hall and the adults would decorate the sanctuary and the annex.  As I got into middle and high school I would kind of split my time between the two. I really enjoyed both activities, and fortunately, I kind of got to have my cake and eat it too. [Side note: I’ve never really understood where that phrase comes from. I obviously know what it means and how to use it, but it’s still weird.]

I also love going to Christmas Eve Services. The place is packed to the rafters and everyone is excited to see you, especially if you’re home from college for the holiday! And when the lights in the sanctuary are turned off and all you see are candles held aloft with the glow of the Advent candles and the Christmas tree behind the organ, it’s just magical while we sing ‘Silent Night’ a capella as a congregation.  

Another tradition that has been modified since Adam and I have gotten married is watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” after the Christmas Eve Service. I got it on DVD so it’s pretty portable and last year Adam and I watched it on my laptop, I think. We were at his parents’ last year for Christmas morning.

Wow, I just looked over this post and it is massively long! Hm. I guess I will wrap it up and continue tomorrow with more!

What are some of your favorite pre-Christmas traditions? Why do you love (or hate) the holiday season?

A Look Back At the Firsts - Nostalgia Monday

Today is the first day of classes for my alma mater, Central Michigan University.  I had a great four years there, and I have no regrets.  I miss the wonderful people I met and I won't forget the great experiences I had there.

Andrew, chillin' in the ATEP lab

The cast and crew of Dead Man's Cell Phone

Some of the class of Irish Theatre History 2011 in Ireland, the night we did Caley Dancing

But I want to post a little nostalgia about the firsts for my that happened while I was there.

At Central I had my first apartment, that is now a parking lot instead.  Here, Adam gave me my claddaugh ring, as a promise ring.  I had my second apartment on campus too, and this apartment is where my wonderful boyfriend of 3 1/2 years proposed to me.

This building is also now a parking lot.  If you drive down Washington, through the center of campus, past the EHS building, the parking lot between EHS and Washington is where the two buildings I first lived in on my own used to stand.

While at Central I met two of my best friends, Courtney and Nicole.

Both of whom were bridesmaids in our wedding.  Melissa (one of my BFFs from my childhood) joined us when she came to CMU for grad school and Nicole introduced us to Lee.

Melissa (MOH1) and I on Adam's and my wedding day

L-R: Nicole, Courtney (holding Bauer), Me (please excuse my crazy eyes, I was trying not to blink) and Lee.  Our last Christmas with all of us in Michigan.

We used to have weekly breakfast gatherings where I would cook breakfast and we'd all hangout and eat and have a great time with friends.  This was a change from our weekly dinners we had the previous semester.

One of the biggest firsts while I was in Mount Pleasant:

Adam and I moved in together.

We moved in together the summer after we got engaged/summer before we got married.

And this summer we had to say good bye to it, two years after we moved in.

 Our tiny kitchen

It was remodeled about two months before we moved.

Looooong hallway that looked so nice when I decorated for Christmas.  I had a lot of fun with different things in this hallway.

The office

The office continued

We had so much closet space in this place.

First bathroom

connected by the shower/tub to 

the bathroom that connected to our bedroom

See? Seriously tons of closet space!

The room seems so much smaller without our stuff in it.

It was out this window that there was a great field where we played frisbee a lot.

Then we head back down the hall to our living room/dining room.

This apartment complex wasn't the best, but it was our first, together.  We came home to this apartment after our wedding, it was the first address we had on our drivers licenses that wasn't our parents' addresses.  We came home from our honeymoon to this apartment, and from our first wedding anniversary celebration.

So much happened here, it was hard to leave.  It felt like home.

Sorry for the quality, light was bad and I was trying not to cry until after the picture.

But today, I hope that even though the faculty is on strike, that every student's college experience at Central is as amazing as mine was and they have a lot of phenomenal firsts.  And I want to thank the Faculty for my experience. Though I didn't graduate with an ATEP degree, I learned loads from the ATEP faculty.  And the Theatre, Interpretation and Dance faculty made my experience with the theatre program one of the best times in my life.  I learned so much in class, working shows (whether I was crewing or in them), and about myself.  I loved every minute of my theatre major.  The friends I made, the people I met, thank you for my great experience at Central.

Fire Up Chips!

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Thanks to Katie, Tim, Nicole, Lee and Titus Photography for some of the photos in this post, the rest are taken by me.

30 Days of Truth - Day 9: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted

When I first looked at the title for today this morning, I couldn't think of anyone particular off of the top of my head.  But as I was walking home from Costume Shop and Pita Pit this evening, I had some time to really think about it.

Every year, for as long as I can remember, my family and I have gone on vacation in August, just before school starts up again.  We go to this little campground called PH Hoeft State Park outside of a tiny town called Rogers City in Northern Michigan.  And every year for a number of years we would see another family and all of us kids would play together.  As we grew up, and as our schedules would change when we would go, we didn't see them as often and now we never see them.  Unfortunately, I have kind of stopped wondering if we'll see them there.

We had a lot of fun for those two weeks-ish every year.  We would play cards, run around, ride bikes, play capture the flag, run around the natural forts and just be kids.  Even as we became teens we would still chill out together and have a great time.  There were attempts to keep in touch over the year until the next summer, but it never seemed to work.  I regret this so much, and I can't find them on Facebook, even though I have tried.  And all I can remember is that their parents owned a Sporting Goods store and that their first names were Sam, Chris and Sarah.  I also remember Sam's last name, but in the sake of her privacy, I won't put it here.  All of the rest of the info should be enough for them to be able to know that it's me and them and try and contact me, if they want.

I hope that eventually, we'll re-connect, I don't want to let go completely.