Merry (Almost) Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve!

Later today, John and I will make our way down to his home town to be with his family, and tomorrow morning we'll drive out to Pittsburgh to be with mine.

As of yet, we don't have any big New Year's Eve plans, although I am running a 5K that afternoon (I also have to work that day, so I guess I'm going to be skipping out a bit early in order to get there on time... luckily I still have plenty of vacation that I was just going to bank for next year, so it shouldn't be a big deal).

I'm currently incredibly addicted to adagio's Holiday Tea Set.  I even like the cranberry one, though I didn't expect I would.  The gingerbread and candy cane are amazing.  I've always like adagio's flavored tea because, while you can taste the flavor, it doesn't assault you, it's more subtle than, say, teavana's flavors, which I appreciate.  As I'm typing this entry, I'm drinking the candy apple one, which I also did not think I'd like, but turns out it's pretty good, too! This is, of course, in no way a paid advertisement, I just thought I'd let you know what I'm currently obsessed with. If you're thinking about ordering any tea from adagio, and never have before, let me know and I can send you a $5 gift certificate. If you use it, I get some "frequent cup" points, which will give me money off of future purchases, so, help me feed my addiction!!!

Every September I take a week off of work. This is usually when John and I go on vacation, but this year we decided to spend money on the house instead of travelling, so most of the week was spent at home. I did take a few days to go visit my close friend Kristy. She and her wife had twins this year so I wanted to see the cuties and spend some time with Kristy.  I, of course, took a bajillion photos but only uploaded one to flickr (I always feel weird posting photos of other people's kids there).

Happy Grace!

I feel bad for leaving precious Zoe out, so here's a photo of her!

Kristy and Kate left chocolates on my pillow along with ear plugs (the guest room was right next to the nursery) and this eye mask thingy. Yoshi liked it.

After I got home from Kristy's, there was a wedding to go to!  It was at this beautiful old building in Akron, which I had been to a number of times but never for a wedding and I LOVED it. John and I have talked about having a Not-Wedding Reception for our 10 year anniversary - food, drinks, dancing and of course cake (and Cake!), and this was always a place I wanted to consider, and you can see why from the photos. LOVE!

I liked this idea - there were different pictures on the name cards depending on what entree you ordered!  Also, they spelled my name right, which only seems to happen at about half the weddings I go to, which astounds me because it's really not a hard name to spell...

Who are these scary-looking people???

They had a photo booth with  props. And John is John, and that's about all I can do to explain this photo.

Nearing the end...

I can't believe there's only one more work week until Christmas. It's crazy. 2012 went so fast!

Earlier this week, YPA had their holiday party, and donations went toward a family we "adopted" for Christmas, and today we're going out to buy the presents for the family. It's a grandmother + three grandchildren and we raised enough money to really make it a happy holiday for them, I think.  Exciting.

The only other thing going on in the past week has been work, work, WORK.  I wish it wasn't so crazy-busy there so close to the holidays, because holidays are stressful enough, but I put in a very long work week. We finally made some significant progress on Friday and so I'm hoping next week will be an easy week.  And since I'm actually working the week between Christmas and New Years, I'm thinking that will be my week to catch up on all the "little things" that get pushed aside to do later, since no one else will be around to bother me!

As for the photos, I'm still posting from August over here, but I am slowly catching up... it seems I post about once a week and post more than a week's worth of photos at once, so that means I'll eventually catch up, right???

The view at Wolf Creek Winery

And some of the selection there!

OMG, I totally forgot about this quinoa salad until seeing this photo. This thing is amazing, mostly because of the dressing. I'm drooling thinking about it now.

Our friend Joe perfomring

A rose from our garden

Lemon pepper tofu on brown rice

We visiting our friends in Columbus, and the timing of this photo I got of their son cracks me up every time I look at it!

Pajama shopping!

This weekend was the weekend of Christmas shopping. And I did it all in ONE DAY and IN MY PAJAMAS! This means it is now too late to request any gift from me AND it means that if whatever you wanted couldn't be bought online (not sure what that would be...), then you didn't get it.

How's that for Christmas spirit?

But thank goodness for internets, because the traffic in Fairlawn/Montrose is bad enough the rest of the year, the horror of Christmas-time is unbearable (I imagine the situation is similar near E&R's house).

Nothing really more to report on in life in general. I've still been working long, exhuasting hours and running a lot. That's about it.

So, where did I leave off on the (non-instagram) photos?  Let's see, we were still in the summer/cookout season!  Sure looks nice right about now, doesn't it?

This is what my monitor looks like when editing photos

And this is a photo from the session I was editing above

I built bikes for kids as part of a YPA event. The bikes were actually called AK Rowdy.  (for those who don't know, it's a slang nickname for Akron)

Ok, this looks gross, I know, but it's the stuff for vegan manicotti!  It's just tofu, hummus and spinach. It's SO GOOD, and doesn't make you feel all bloated and "cheesy" after eating!

This is real cheese. Making quesadillas for John and I (John's is plain cheese in the background, mine has tempeh and all sorts of stuff from the garden in it).

Yoshi is ready for a mission

Veggies and herbs from the garden ready to go on the grill!

This wine is on fire. Also, E, I'm going to try to remember to tell you this closer to when you go to Maine, but, I  BROKE this wine glass (on my birthday, no less), and so if they still have some next year, I'd love if you could get another one for me.

I take a LOT of game photos that I don't bother posting to the blog, but I thought Randy might be missing them.

oh look! This is the finished manicotti!

Novembergram!

December has started, and so that means a look back on the past month in Instagram!  It's rather cat-centric because of Myles having to go to the Kitty Hospital. The photo with him with food in front of him is how we knew something was really wrong, he didn't even want treats. The black and white photo is actually Maia, home alone.  And the shaved-arm kitty is Myles when he got back from the hospital, as they shaved to put IVs in.  I also got some new running gear from lululemon, whose logo is the script A you see, and the jacket I got to run in has thumb holes - yay!