you are invited!

Hello dear blogging friends. For those of you who aren't on Facebook (why would you not be on Facebook?!), just wanted to let you know that I'll be in Iowa City for one last time this Thursday and some friends and I will be grabbing dinner at The Vine (Coralville) at 6:30 so I'd love it if you could join us! Bring anyone you would like, the more the merrier. I'd love to see as many people as possible before I leave!

See you at the Vine!

PS- let me know if you're planning on coming so I can warn The Vine!

christmas and such

Remember how all I really wanted for Christmas was you...wait...I mean peace? I totally got it. I had a really nice holiday season. I felt completely okay taking a break from the craziness of leaving to just be with my family. There was no drama or stress, things just went along as they always do. It was great. Here are some pictures from my holiday season. Notice the lack of group pictures of us doing the normal Christmas things...I forgot to take pictures during the actual celebrating. Oops.

Luke got to put the angel on the tree. We got a new tree this year and it's pretty big so that will be Luke's job from now on because he's decidedly taller than the rest of us...which is still weird.

I was excited to make Christmas cookies which meant going through all of my mom and grandma's recipes to find the right Christmas ones. It was fun to see my grandma's handwriting again. It's been a long time. I found this recipe for "Angie's Dad's Favorite Brownies" which was cute. My grandma really loved my dad (and he loved her too!) which was always really nice.
I made this scarf for the Secret Santa thing at work. We had a $5 limit which is just not enough to have fun with but yarn is cheap so I made a scarf. It was for Tiffany, hence the "T". She liked it. What did I get from my Secret Santa you ask? NOTHING!! My Secret Santa sucked! I have filed a formal complaint with Starbucks, don't worry.
On Christmas Eve we go to Grandma B's (my step-dad's mom) for a Norwegian food. She makes lutefisk, which couldn't be more disgusting, but there are meatballs and lefse, which are amazing. On the wall by the door is Luke's growth chart. Other people started adding themselves, which is really rude. All of the blank ones are Luke, there are lots.

Grandma hard at work in the kitchen while we do nothing.

My aunt kept commenting on how Luke blended right into the painting he was sitting in front of. She was right.

I taught my niece how to lay under the tree to look at the lights. She thought it was a pretty fun trick. I love how she scrunches up her whole face when she smiles.

It was hard getting a picture of Carter without the Spiderman costume I let him wear all night...by all night I mean including to the movie theater and to the Burger King playland where he introduced himself to the other children as Spiderman. "Hi, my name is Spiderman"

The best part of my Christmas vacation was getting to spend tons of time with Crissa. I love that she has a job that lets her have Christmas break. She really wanted to meet Isaiah so we went over to Alisha's to see him. I had just found one of the old versions of Labyrinth at Barnes and Noble so we played it. We played this game THOUSANDS of times in junior high and high school. It was really really fun to play with the true Labyrinth masters again (No offense, Eli). Alisha won but only because she tricked us...typical. Cady (Crissa's sister) was there too but apparently not allowed to be in this picture.
We got this hat for Isaiah. We also got him a shirt that says "brrr" on it. He was really fun and completely cooperative when we needed to pretend we were 14 years old and just play Labyrinth and pretend we weren't growing up at all.

So that was basically my Christmas break. I'm glad that my memories of this time include so many good things and not things like airline luggage regulations, running out of sprinkles for the peppermint mochas or the fact that global warming killed all of the snow. I hope your Christmas included peace and joy too...oh and the Sufjan Stevens cd's...I definitely hope it included those!

sorry jo

Joanna is totally right, it has been way too long since I've actually blogged. Basically I'm COMPLETELY overwhelmed. Completely. I leave in 12 days. 12. That's not enough time to do everything I need to do to be ready to go. My response to this is to just give up and admit that I just won't be completely ready. Ever. So now I have to decide what needs to be done and what doesn't, which just means more thinking. I hit a point every day where I just can't think about things any more and I have to stop. Last night I gave up and turned on Animal Planet, which worked for about an hour before thoughts like, "Can I afford to go to the dentist before I go? Can I wait and go to the dentist in Africa? Who do I call about that? Starbucks should have better dental coverage because their drinks are so bad for your teeth." I fell asleep last night wondering if the UPS Store would let me use their scale to weigh my luggage and then I woke up at 5am because apparently there was too much to think about for me to just sleep.

The good news is that I'm pretty organized. Every day has its own piece of paper which is labeled and hanging on my closet doors. My shifts at work and other appointments are on it and then there's a big (BIG) list of the things I still need to do and buy and every day I try to plug them into the days I still have left. Most of the big stuff is over. All of my medical stuff will be completely taken care of by Friday (when my TB test gets checked). Oh- good story. I went in on Tuesday for my physical and I wasn't really looking forward to it. When the doctor walked in she looked really familiar and I realized that she goes to Kaio church, this small church in Cedar Falls that I've been to a few times. We recognized each other right away and she pulled out the forms I had given the nurse that have the AIM logo on them and she said "I was SO excited to see you! You're my best patient!!" She was literally thrilled to be the one to give me my physical. It was so great. We kept getting distracted because she'd ask me a bunch of questions (GOOD questions like, "How is God using this experience in your family life?") and then she'd say, "Oh sorry, don't answer that yet, I need to listen to your lungs." It was amazing.

Okay so it's 6am and my step dad just came upstairs because he heard someone awake up here and he was downstairs not sleeping too. Pretty funny. He just looked at the map of Africa in my room and I pointed my city out to him and he said "I bet that's where I'll be in about a year." It was so cute. (My family is going to come visit me in a year when I get my vacation time). PS- I just looked it up and the current temperature in my city is 70 degrees. I can't wait to get there.

I can't wait to get there!

Okay. I'm going to go try and get some more sleep now. I'm having lunch with my step-mom and my sister-in-law today and that will require me to be well-rested at best. I do have a few pictures from Christmas so don't worry, there will be pictures soon.