December 31, 2009

It's a winter wonderland outside! I woke up to the snow falling outside my window. What a great way to send out 2009! I'm excited for 2010 and the opportunities it brings.

I had a great Christmas. I took the bus down to Philly where my dad picked my sister and me up. Shannon and I did some last minute Christmas shopping the next day and I got some final stocking stuffers. The next day we drove down to North Carolina to spend the holiday with my extended family. And this year we hit both sides of the family tree. On Thursday, we went over to Aunt Sue & Uncle Mike's house. It was great to see everybody and catch up. My grandmother had a stroke several weeks ago, so it's wonderful to get the updates that she's doing better and progressing. I'm sending loving and healing thoughts! The next day was Christmas, which was spent with the other side of the fam. It was a great day of food, family, and presents! Couldn't ask for anything more!

I wish you blessings in the New Year! :o)

December 21, 2009

I've had a wonderful couple of weeks since my last entry. I celebrated my birthday on Saturday, which just happened to coincide with the blizzard that hit the east coast. I love a good dose of snow, so it's perfect for me, but it did put a kink in our plans. My whole family and a few family friends were planning to come up to NYC to surprise me and spend the day in the big apple, but unfortunately, the weather put an end to those plans. But I did have a great day! After spending time in Bryant Park, grabbing a bite to eat, seeing a movie ("The Blind Side"...so good, go see it), I returned home to a huge surprise. Several of my friends jumped out and yelled "SURPRISE!" I hadn't expected a party at all and it was such a wonderful night. Everybody brought me different Christmas ornaments to put on the tree... the perfect gift for me. I made my birthday mac n' cheese and baked some chocolate chip cookies. It was such a fun night. Thank you to all of my friends who braved the storm to come make my birthday so special!

I'd like to wish a huge congratulations to Jen who gave birth to a baby girl on Wednesday! I can't wait to meet little Catherine!!

I'm so looking forward to Christmas this week and spending time with my family. I wish everybody the happiest of holidays!

December 6, 2009

The holidays are here and I'm loving the Christmas season in the city. We put our tree up last week! This is my first Christmas in my new apartment, since I was gone during the holidays last year, so I wanted to go all out this year. They're selling Christmas trees in the lot right next door to my apartment, so we went down and picked out perfect tree. It's a 7' frasier fir that fits perfectly right next to the couch. We put on the lights and garland and I added all of my ornaments, which pretty much filled the tree. Ever since I was little, I've collected ornaments and each year, I would get a different Santa ornament in my stocking. So our tree pretty much has a Santa theme. I love it! And we've also hung live garland and even got some spare limbs from the woman that sold us our tree and decorated with those. So with all that greenery, it smells soooo good when you walk in the door. I love Christmas!

And we got our first snow flakes of the season yesterday. It didn't really come down nearly as much as other places in the country where it really accumulated, but it was still excited to get a few flakes.

Since I last wrote in my journal, I traveled down to MD to spend Thanksgiving with the family. I took the bus down to Philly on Tuesday and hung out at Shannon's place for a couple days. Then we drove down to Maryland early Thursday morning. We all chipped in to put together our Thanksgiving dinner. Dad cooked the turkey and ham. Shannon made stuffing and mashed potatos. And my contribution was the green bean casserole and pumpkin pie. And Cameron supervised everything. LOL It was all delicious! Then on Friday, I decorated the house for Christmas. They didn't put the tree up the past couple years, so I didn't want them to go another year without a Christmas tree! So I dusted off all of the decorations from the attic and now I think the house looks great, if I do say so myself. :o)

I had one audition this past week. It was for 42nd STREET at the Riverside Theatre. They taught us a variation on the opening number of the show. It was a long combo, but felt great to get my feet tapping again! I must admit, it's been longer than it should be since I've been in a tap class, but I was pretty pleased with how it went. I made it past the first cut and got to do the combo again after he added some more specifics. Then I showed some tricks, doing second turns, leaps, splits. All in all, I was really happy with how it went. But they had a couple more days of callbacks and I wasn't invited, so it's not meant to be. There are a couple auditions this week, so I'll just keep trucking along!

I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sister, who celebrated her birthday on Tuesday. Hope you had a great one Shannon! :o)