Mr. Mom

The Holidays are upon us; you can tell by my iTunes Christmas playlist on continuous play, and the green and red bins still scattered downstairs.  I have been lame and not updated my blog for almost a month- not that I haven't had plenty to write about!  So many different subjects come into my head during the day, yet sitting down in front of the computer has not happened.  I will spare you every picture from the last 20 some days, but I will have to admit that I did forget to take a picture one day!  I guess it's a 364 Day Project now.  Anyways- my biggest excuse for not blogging at all since November 13 is that we bought a new computer.  Not just any computer, by the way, but a MAC!  We have heard so many places that Macs are supposed to be better, especially when it comes to managing and editing photos.  I haven't been convinced of that yet, as I am still low on the learning curve for learning all of the Mac nuances.  After over 20 years of using PC's, this has been quite an adjustment and it certainly is not easier yet.  It has taken me forever just to figure out how to rename files.  But, the Mac Air is a lot lighter than our old Dell...

Thanksgiving came and went.  This year we had both families come to us in Leesburg, and I again cooked a Holiday meal.  I was in charge of the turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce.  I'm going to pat myself on the back and say that my turkey and mashed potatoes as usual came out damn good.  The pumpkin pie was good, but I do need to practice making crusts.  Winter project, anyone?  I had never tried cranberry sauce before, so I thought I would give it a go.  I believe it turned out the way it was supposed to, but considering there is still some in our fridge, I don't think it was a hit.  Here is our family picture from the day, notice who is sitting at the head of the table...

This past weekend I spent my first night away from CJ.  I had signed up for the Washington DC Hot Chocolate 5K on Saturday and stayed Friday night in the city with my friend Sumner who also was running the race.  I didn't leave until we put CJ to bed, but it was still hard to to know that I wouldn't be seeing him until well into Saturday.  The race was probably the most unorganized race I have ever run.  The location was at the National Harbor which was too small to accommodate 20,000 runners.  There was a ton of traffic, and we started the race 45 minutes late (not fun when it is 35 degrees out, but it could have been worse).  There were parts of the race that were so narrow that we HAD to walk.  We even ended up running the course backwards!!  Because I'm so slow right now to begin with, I knew there would be no personal record happening, so the conditions ended up being a fabulous excuse for my embarrassing time.  And, the chocolate was pretty good at the end.  Here are me, Sumner, and Sumner's friend Adrienne with our hot chocolates. 

After the race, I went back to Sumner's apartment and got ready to drive down to my friend Kathy's house for her baby shower.  It was nice to see many of my UVA friends and celebrate yet another new addition to our Pep Band family.  Sunday I got to see more of my UVA friends again; unfortunately, though it was for a more somber reason.  Jon Hukari, a member of the Pep Band, passed away on Thanksgiving and Sunday was his memorial service.  Even though I was not close to him, I remember that he was a hilarious guy and will definitely be missed by many.  Kevin got to be Mr. Mom this weekend and I appreciate him taking over so I could attend these events-  (and have a bit of a break myself)

So we have less than 3 more weeks until Christmas.  How did this happen?  I really try to stay on the ball with things, but it never happens.  These past few days I have been trying to take good pictures of CJ for our holiday card and he is just not cooperating.  He is such a smiley kid, how come he can't do it when I'm trying to take a picture of him??  Today I spent a whole hour taking pictures of him in an uber-cute Santa suit and while he was content until the very end, he never smiled.  Only when I took him out of the bumbo seat and lifted him up high would he laugh.  Grr.  Here are some of the types of pics I am getting of him- still cute, but not as good as I would like...

Well, maybe when the Little Man wakes up from his nap we will try again.  The poor thing has a very persistent mother.