Turn and Face the Strange

Happy new year! I really hope everyone had a good holiday season.

My holidays were pretty spectacularly wonderful. It was certainly the best Christmas ever, for me. Not only was it my first white Christmas, on Christmas Eve, P proposed and I answered with an enthusiastic, "Yes!".

After making a few announcement phone calls (or voicemails where we tried to be as casual as possible, so as not to give it away until they called back, and one call that didn't happen on time, realizing I had the wrong contact info- oops!), we had a lovely quiet dinner to ourselves then spent Christmas day with P's family. Coincidentally, P's sister's bf proposed a day before P did, so it was quite a celebratory Christmas. One of my Christmas presents was a beautiful "Welcome to the family" quilt from P's mother, which of course made me a blubbery mess, but definitely tears of joy. Her work is just stunning. And it's a family of which I'm proud to be a member!

New Years Eve was lovely, too. We both got fondue stuff for Christmas, so had a wonderfully decadent fondue party for two. We started off with a cheddar/beer fondue (it was even low fat, but you wouldn't know by tasting it), with some spicy mustard in which we dipped some grainy sourdough and tart apples; I'd made a roast earlier in the week that yielded some excellent broth, which we used for scallops and very thin cuts of steak, perfect for hot pot cooking; finally, we capped it off with bananas foster fondue (white chocolate-based) with angel food cake, bananas and small chunks of brownies. Of course, dessert was so rich we each got in about 3 bites and saved it for dinner the next night.

In other news, it's also looking like I'll be getting into the school program I want. I won't know for sure until the end of the month or so, but I also have a backup plan, just in case. My admissions contact seemed encouraging, though. My application and supporting material is all in order (including a summary outlining everything I've done since high school- whew!), so now I wait. Yep, the other news I've been sitting on is that I'm going back to school next fall to get my teaching credential. Yikes! With a drastic change in majors, it's going to take longer than I'd originally thought, but it's something I really want, so it's worth the time. Now to get a new job so I can save for both tuition and towards a wedding (albeit a small, simple one).

So, as you can tell, there's been more brewing out here than the measly blizzards.

I didn't really make any specific hard and fast resolutions this year. Mostly, I have ongoing goals-- keeping up better with people who are far away (time differences suck and all this traveling up and down takes its toll, too), continuing on my quest for better health (I did a bit of unexpected damage over the holidays, but there was a LOT of celebrating going on, and I've already lost some of the pounds back in my daily routine), keeping focused on the long term while enjoying the moment... I'm sure there are more, but that's the gist of it.

(Oh! And as a follow-up to my last post, no wonder it hurt like it did! I broke my toe, vs. just a sprain. It's still a bit bothersome, but pretty much back to normal. I've certainly done worse!)