Holiday Decorating

It's that time of year...

We put up the tree and the garland and all the other Christmas decorations today, and it should have been more happy and fun, but it made me a little sad. It's the first Christmas I haven't been in our old house for like, nine or ten years. And it was also the first time it was just my mom and I decorating the tree. It felt lonely.

That, and it took us a freaking hour to figure out how to set up the fake tree with its unnecessary surplus of outlets and prong thingies to plug into the outlets. Seriously. An hour. We almost gave up.

But we finished, and our tree is such a masterpiece. See? It's not very clear, but this is the view from outside the house looking in the window...




It's always fun looking through all the ornaments you forgot about over the year and discovering which ones you really love. We have the coolest ornaments because my mom is like, an ornament enthusiast... she has ones from 30+ years ago; all different sorts. So our tree always comes out looking awesome. I secretly think it's better than anyone else's Christmas tree i've ever seen. This is one of the old ones. It's one of my favorites.




I miss having an actual fireplace to hang stockings on. And every year we get out the stockings I feel injusticed anyways, because I never got a stocking specifically made for me. Erin and Jenna got ones, but my parents just got lazy by the time I came around. Hahaha.

And every time we take out those letters that spell NOEL, I have the urge to rearrange them to spell something different and see if anyone notices. like LONE. or ELNO. or LENO. hahahaha. I think i'll do that this year.
We kept trying to take pictures in front of the tree with Abby. She's very hard to pose with.








We got if after a few tries, though.
































Mom and I took her for a walk at the courthouse afterward. It was absolutely freezing but she coaxed me out. It was nice, spending some time with my mom and not having or wanting to do anything else. It doesn't happen very often. I feel like I need to spend more quality time with her before I have to move.

Overall it was a pretty relaxed day... I keep having the feeling that there's some homework that i'm forgetting, or something I need to do, and then I reassure myself that I don't, and then I remind myself I don't care anyways, since the end of the semester is sooo close. Once I get my acceptance letter I feel like i'm pretty much going to stop caring about school in general. Hahaha. I've already somewhat checked out.

I submitted my very last math assignment EVER the other day. It felt so good, I can't even express it. I will never take another math class again after Thursday... the satisfaction of that statement is unbelievable. Assuming I don't change my major, anyways. I'm just so ready for this semester to be over. This year, in fact.

And i'm really, really excited for London. :)

And the rest of my weekend wasn't too bad either. Friday was acker night, and that was alright... It sucked a little because I was by myself for most of the night, but it was also good because I played at the fine arts theater and played an unaccompanied solo i've been working on since Wednesday, and I felt very satisfied with how it came out, considering the amount of time i've had it. Saturday was a wake-up-at-noon-stay-in-pajamas-all-day day. I went to my mom's work Christmas party, which was pretty fun. And I found out that Sam got solo chair in the top band at All State Jazz. That's like... the best chair possible. He got the best scores of any trumpet player there. He's the best jazz trumpet player in the state. It kind of made my day. And it's so awesome because I feel just as proud of his accomplishments as I do my own. :) I think I am more proud of him than he is of himself, actually. But that's fine with me. Hahaha.

And i'm liking this blog thing so far. I'll try to write pretty regularly. I hope more of my friends get one.