New Years Weekend Recap

My New Years weekend was a busy one, but it was a good busy filled with fun things. :)

I worked the morning of New Years Eve, but was off in the afternoon since I worked the morning on Christmas Eve as well.  I had a relaxing afternoon taking care of some house cleaning, talking on the phone with a friend, and finishing reading the book for my one-day Theological Summit class this week.  For the evening, we had invited a bunch of friends over but we weren't sure how many would come.  We ended up having 3 other couples over, plus the one couple's 3 kids age 3 and under.  It was a lot of fun, and we basically spent the evening playing Guitar Hero on the Wii, a few rounds of the board game Trouble, and eating lots of snacks!  I think everyone had a good time, but we're all party poopers - the party died a little after 10pm!  The family with the 3 little kids left about 9ish since the kids needed to go to bed, and the other couples left after 10pm.  We debated going to bed, but we decided to stay up and watch the ball drop.  We did, and then went to bed about 12:05! :)

On New Years Day Bill had to work most of the day (9:30am-6:30pm) so it was like a Saturday for me since I was off work all day.  I did laundry, took care of some stuff around the house, and ran some errands.  I also cleaned up my office at home, since it was quite a mess!  It always gets messy during the school term, and I hadn't had a chance to clean it yet this break.  I moved my main work table around and got everything cleaned up and organized for the new school term, which technically starts tomorrow.

That evening, Bill and I met at our friends Ken and Jennie's house.  We had dinner with them last week Tuesday, and then went to their house so Bill could work on their computer.  Their laptop is still in good shape, despite the fact that it's at least 6 years old, but it had contracted a virus of some sort so it was extremely slow.  That evening Bill backed up their stuff and reinstalled Windows, but he didn't have a chance to do all of the Windows updates, reinstall some software, or put their stuff back on it.  So we went there Friday evening to have dinner with them again and take care of some of that computer stuff.  I think Bill got at least some of the Windows updates done, but it was taking forever since they have a very slow Internet connection.  It was still fun hanging out with them again though, and I spent the evening teaching Jennie how to use her new Motorola Droid phone - she had been drooling over mine, and has her own now!  She picked it up pretty quickly, but by the end of the evening she definitely had information overload.

Saturday morning we were up fairly early so we could head to Ft. Wayne and spend the day with my grandparents.  On the drive over the weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be snowy or sunny, but there was hardly any traffic so it went smoothly.  It was great to see them again and catch up with them, since we hadn't seen them since their anniversary in August.  We chatted, had lunch, played some games (their Aggravation marble game, and then some Skip Bo), and visited some more.  My aunt, my cousin, and his son came over late afternoon to stay the night there on their way to Michigan this weekend, so it was nice to see them again too.  My grandparents took us out to dinner at the Factory restaurant there, as a change of pace from our usual Triangle Park restaurant.  It was good, but I don't think we'll go back there again... the service was slow, it was pretty noisy, and the food wasn't as good as Triangle Park.  After dinner we briefly stopped at their house to drop them off (Bill is chauffeur when we're there), and then headed home.  The drive home was pretty snowy in parts, but other parts were just fine.

Sunday we had church in the morning of course, and got home from that almost the middle of the afternoon.  We were lazy for a little while, then got to work taking down our Christmas decorations - mainly just the tree and the lighted garland on the banister.  We'll leave our village up for a few months since it's really pretty, and now we just call it a "winter village."  It was way too cold and snowy to take down our outdoor lights, and we weren't ambitious enough to bring in our lighted nativity people so they'll be out for at least a few more days.

When we put our tree up this year, we moved the loveseat to the opposite side of the room, on the wall that goes to the dining room, and we decided we'd like to keep it there.  So we moved the double recliner from over by the fireplace to that front wall where the loveseat was, and we put the papasan chair by the fire place.  We really like the new arrangement, since now we can both sit together on the double recliner to watch TV... we even tested it out last night by watching an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and it works nicely.

Sunday night we met up with Bill's family at the Whistle Stop restaurant in North Baltimore (about 10 min north of Findlay) to celebrate Bill's and Amy's birthdays. With their birthdays being just a few weeks apart and everyone's schedules getting crazy starting this week, we figured we'd get the celebration in while we could!  The meal was really good; I enjoyed my chicken while everybody else enjoyed their beef, which is just fine with me.  After that we came home, watched some TV, then went to bed early.

Today is a busy day for me!  I'm working this morning, then after lunch I'm driving to Pittsburgh for a meeting tonight for work.  The meeting is at 7pm, and it's a good thing I called there this morning to verify that, since I was originally told the meeting was 7:30pm!  After the meeting, which should be done by 8pm, I'm driving back to Findlay.  According to Google Maps, it's just over a 4 hour drive each way, so it'll be a long day for me!  Fortunately I have a good audio book to "read" and plenty of music to listen to.  With any luck, I'll be home by 12:30am tonight.  I would wait and drive back tomorrow morning, except I have Theological Summit at Winebrenner, and I need to be there by around 10am.  I'm more of a night person than a morning person, so I'd rather drive tonight than early in the morning, plus that gives me more cushion time in case I hit any slow parts due to snow or whatever.