I am spoiled.

Christmas was a different experience this year, because we weren't surrounded by family. To compensate for the emotional pain of this, Lee and I kind of overindulged each other with gifts. I guess we were helping the economy out, so that's a great thing. On my birthday, Dec. 24, Lee woke me up with a necklace as my first present. Then he braved the traffic and took me to work since he had the day off, and brought me Starbuck's. He spent the morning shopping and got my car washed. There is this white stuff they use up here to de ice the roads. I don't know if it's salt or calcium or something else, but it sticks on the sides of your car and, being the cold weather novices that we are, we are afraid this white stuff will damage our car, so therefore, it is of utmost importance to wash the car often. If anyone can tell us what that stuff is, we'd appreciate the knowledge and it may just put an end to our paranoia. Anyways, Lee picked me up from work around 11 and we walked around this fancy mall across from my office, then he took me to a fancy seafood restaurant for lunch. I got to have crab legs! This was very important, since I get good seafood twice a year: my birthday and our anniversary. Crab legs are so worth the effort of eating them. Yum. I opened a second present there and got a pair of leather boots. They smelled so good. We got lost going to Walgreen's in Fairfax (we always get lost in Fairfax), then we went bowling. Turns out, the bowling alley we went to was donating all their proceeds on Christmas eve to a charity of the patrons' choosing, so we got to help out the Diabetes foundation. That was a great way to spend my birthday. Lee made me a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie cake that was really good and we had BFD (breakfast for dinner). We rented Fred Claus, because White Christmas was already rented out. Other gifts I got ( I really sound like a child...) was XBox SceneIt, which is so fun, a couple more necklaces, a Cowboys hat, sweatpants, and a hat with earflaps to keep my head warm when we are outside and it's cold.

Christmas morning we woke up and opened our stockings. Turns out Santa was really into gift-giving this year as well, as our stockings were definitely stocked to completion. We drank Coke, as is the tradition in my family. It serves as a nonspoken reminder of my Maw and how much she loved Christmas (and Coca-cola). After stockings I put the ham on and we opened our presents from each other. Around 12:30 we tried to get on the Webcam to open presents with my family, but the online call kept getting dropped so we just opened them over the phone. This was the hardest part of the day because we could tell exactly what all we were missing. It was very bittersweet. Then we used the XBox to watch Lee's fam open presents. After all the presents were opened we ate our dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, bread and green beans. My ham was unbelievably good and we are still eating the leftovers, 5 days later. Later that eve we went to Benn and Laura Oltmann's house and had dinner and played games. They just moved here from Oregon and couldn't go home for Christmas either, so it was nice to be able to hang out with people in a similar situation.

Friday eve my friend Ann threw me a birthday party at the Cheesecake Factory. It was lots of fun to be with friends for my birthday. I had been telling everyone I was getting an ipod for Christmas, but when I realized I didn't get one, Lee just told me that he was waiting for a newer version of the Zune to come out, and I just accepted his excuse at face value. One of our friends gave me an ipod case and said, "You got one, right?" So I had to explain that I didn't, actually. Lee told everyone that he was planning on getting me one, but then he saw this bread maker and decided to get that instead. (The bread maker is great, by the way, we used it for the first time last night and it worked really well). Anyways, his story made everyone laugh and at the end of dinner I opened Lee's last present for me and it was, of course, my Ipod Touch. Now I have a constant soundtrack of my life, because I listen to my ipod everywhere. Or, that was the plan at least, but apparently Lee doesn't like that plan because we were grocery shoppin last night and he took my earphones away, saying, "No Alecia. We're shopping together. I want you with me." I was only listening with one earphone, anyways...I could so hear him still. But, I was reminded of the times I've seen families together, but not, and decided lee was probably right in insisting that there is no ipod during family time. However, right now, I'm either with Lee or at work. Good thing I can use it at work!

flurry of activity

I am now legal to drive in VA! It is so exciting to have the "DMV Drama" behind me. The best part is that my license now reads "AL3CIA". My name was already taken, but this is pretty close, right?

The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy! We've had Christmas parties, Birthday parties (not mine yet...Dec. 24th, don't forget...I may be turning 28, but I'm still excited about my Bday.), Babysitting at the Church Building, Shopping, Wrapping and sending off packages, Christmas card writing, plus, work and long traffic lines everyday. It has been fun, (even traffic's not bad when you are listening to a good book), but we are excited about this week, when we have nothing planned and can now just relax and make Christmas goodies and watch Christmas movies.

I won lots of tickets at the Christmas party at Dave and Busters!!

Lee and i are really spoiling each other with gifts. I think we are subconsciously trying to make up for the lack of family that we will see over the holidays. But it's kind of a race...who can put more stuff under the trees?

Speaking of trees, we have the tackiest tree ever this year. It is a soft pine, which means when you walk past it, it doesn't poke you. Which is great and all, but it also means the branches are too soft to really hold ornaments. We shoved them all on anyways, and now all the branches are droopy. Also, we couldn't find a tree stand anywhere because they were all sold out, so we made our own with a bag of rocks from Home Depot and a bright orange washtub we had sitting around. Then, we strung multicolored lights all over it, only half of which blink on and off, and topped it off with a plastic reindeer lawn ornament, in lieu of a star. Finally, Lee found a scraggly piece of silver garland and wrapped it around the bottom of the tree, since it already was way past "tastefully tacky". Oh, and the tree kind of leans because the washtub is too big, so Lee had to strap the tree in using a hanger. We are one moon pie short of being a redneck catastrophe. On the bright side, we have a fake tree in the corner that is decorated in only the color blue...so classy. But unfortunately, it becomes background noise to the "other" tree.

DMV adventures, deux

A couple of weeks ago Lee and I got up on a chilly Saturday morning to stand in line at the DMV and finally get my license and registration done. This was our third time to do this, and we still hadn't accomplished anything. Well, I succeeded in getting my license (which meant that I had my TX license confiscated, much to my chagrin). However, my title that was supposed to have been fedexed could not be found and the girl behind the counter told me that after 30 days they send it back to the lienholder. Drats! I had had it sent, but then got my job and pushed this terrible errand back, and now I had to wait some more! Well, with Thanksgiving and everything, I haven't taken the opportunity to recall my lienholder to re-request my title. Today, I received a call from the DMV saying, " We've had your title since September, and if you do not come in soon, we will be sending it back to your lienholder." Excuse me? I was at the DMV, my title was at the DMV, all my other paper work was at the DMV, and I still am not registered? Ugh! I called and actually was able to talk to a human being who told me she'd gladly file it unti l Saturday, so that I could come in and get it taken care of. So cross your fingers for Saturday morn! The incredulousness of this predicament is baffling....

Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving without family went surprisingly well. We went to some friends' house and feasted on a terrific bird. I made rolls, but they just don't taste like mom's...I'll get it right someday though. :) We played lots of games and kept busy, so that we wouldn't get homesick. Friday morning I got up and went to Target where I was able to buy lots of goodies. The store wasn't too busy, thankfully. That night we got all dressed up and went to the National Harbor to see the Tree lit up and fireworks. It was fun being on the water, and the Harbor is just beautiful. We went to Old Town Alexandria to have dinner and stopped in at this Mexican place. It looked kind of strange because there were low tables and couches instead of chairs. I was cool with it, though. Then we looked at the menu and saw that it was "Morroccan" not "Mexican". Apparently in our starving stupor we can't read. So we gave our apologies to the mait'r de and vamoosed out of there...it was cold and we weren't feeling adventurous. Then we went to "Hard Times Cafe" and found a new favorite place to eat. They serve the best chili, and it's from Texas! Bonus!