Questing

Here’s my picture from the Christmas Art Exchange.

today I have

*Braved the malls and stores and finished my shopping
*Finished wrapping all my gifts
*helped to cook and decorate about six dozen cookies with Mom.

those three little lines don’t look like much, but that’s about 12 hours of effort.

Yuletime!

Tommorrow night with husband’s fam, Christmas day with my fam. Little bit of driving.

Travel safely, and Merry Christmas!

We had a really busy weekend. Friday night we went to a hockey game downtown, it was an exposition game with the badgers(college team) vs team usa(really great highschool team) it was a really close game and we were right behind the goal, very cool.

Saturday, I finished a book and then we went Christmas shopping, which was exhausting, but needed to be done, we’ll likely do some more tonight. Then I did art until I was too tired. One of my usb ports on my ibook is not working, so I had to swap the printer, tablet and scanner all in and out of one port to get through the process, which took me way longer than I wanted.

I’m pretty sure something is off with her back hip, but I’m not going to obsess over it, it’s a trade, and has a deadline, and I’m really happy with her front thigh/leg. I think he’ll be happy with it. I’m glad I decided to go forward with my rough sketch, I was trying to redraw it, but it didn’t have the same weight(correct sit pose), or energy. This’ll work out just fine. Now I just have to find time to finish it! eek!

I have some work to do on the expression, but sure that with a few more changes it’ll work out just fine.

Sunday, I got my hair done by my bro’s fiancee, she is an awesome hairdresser. Also, My roots had grown out to like 4 inches, and so needed to be redyed. So, now I’m all purdy for the holidays. Then my mom had her office holiday dinner for the biz she owns, and invited us over to olive garden for that, and the over to her house after for desserts. Then we went out to see King Kong at like 8:15. Man, that’s a long movie. We were going to go shopping on Sunday too, but ran out of time.

Always so much to do right before Christmas.

(Been a while since I updated, I know, here’s an entry from the start of this month, if I have time, I’ll update a couple more about the rest of this month-backdating as I go.)
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We spent 16+ hours in the car. My eldest cousin Joe got married the first weekend in Ohio, and we all piled into my Mom’s van for the 8+ hour trip there on Friday, went to the wedding on Saturday, hung out with family after, and then 8+ hour trip back. It was a quick but pleasant trip, punctuated by sadness and joy, and a lot of Firefly played on my laptop. (My mom finally got to see the whole series. Though it was a tad uncomfortable to sit beside my mom for the episode ‘Heart of Gold’…) We also managed two kinds of traveling road stop for specific foods, we had some Whitecastle on the way up(minus onions), and some Skyline Chili(mmm coney’s) on our way back home. Pretty much felt like the complete Ohio trip experience.

We stayed in my Nannie’s (grandma) house, which was strange. She was taken to live in a home where people can keep an eye on her (she has Alzheimer’s) and make sure she’s fed, shortly before my Father died this year. Since then her house has been cleaned and refinished, and most of her things divided up among the families. Sad and hard to do at the time, but better than dealing with all those things and the house after a funeral or something.

When I say we stayed there, I mean we basically camped out. We brought inflatable beds, pillows, sheets for sleeping, and got some groceries for sandwiches and pancakes. Much cheaper than staying in a hotel for the weekend, and less stressful than trying to split up our group to find places at different Aunts and Uncle’s houses. (Logistics get harder with one car and a wedding going on) It was very hard to go into my grandmother’s house and find things cleared out and refinished. No family pictures on the walls, no piano covered in pictures and Christmas cards, no grandfather clock ticking in the corner by a Christmas tree in the front window. Hit me pretty hard.

After the midafternoon reception, we did make some time to go and see Nannie in the home. She looked well, though has lost her glasses and the nurses didn’t seem very concerned about finding them. She had trouble remembering us, and could only remember some of the people from the family portrait. To my brother she said, ‘I don’t know who you are but you sure are handsome’.

Then we headed over to my Aunt’s house (mother of the Groom), to socialize with family, show off my Brother’s England pictures (with Becca narrating about the trip that culminated in their engagement). Watched Joe and Jen open some of their gifts, and had some pizza and pie and icecream with aunts and cousins. The boys played with Wikipedia on Carlo’s Powerbook and watched a college football game.

All in all, a successful family trip.