Happy Holidays

It's hard to believe Christmas is in a few days and New Years right behind it. Somehow, I thought I had so much time at the beginning of December, and now I'm staring down the year and asking myself where did all my time go.

I've never been particularly Christmassy--my sister often refers to me as the Grinch)--but for some reason I thought for sure I would summon the Christmas spirit and finally manage to put up a tree and maybe hang a few lights outside. I didn't set the bar high and aim to put out Christmas cards like half the people I know. I just thought maybe we'd get a Charlie Brown tree, something nice and small that the cats could have fun eating, and put up a decoration or two.

Fail. So far, it's Saturday night and NOTHING has happened. I have a sneaking suspicion we will continue to be Grinch-like for the remainder of this holiday season as well.

I'd like to blame that on us just getting back from our honeymoon, but in all likelihood this would have happened anyway. Sigh, there's always next year. I'm more of a fan of New Years anyway.

Because I totally failed at the holiday cheer on the home front, I figured I'd use some of it here.
So. From my family to yours, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Years. Enjoy the people around you and cherish this time spent with family. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your year.

Christmas is near o_o

It's the week of Christmas, and I am not ready. Not at all. My house is a disaster area. My decorations aren't up yet. My Christmas shopping is only half done. Usually, I'm a little more prepared than this but this month has been hectic and the holidays have managed to creep up on me faster than expected.

For instance, last week I was in Colorado partly for work and partly for pleasure. As a result, I lost a week to the madness. I managed to get some presents while there so it wasn't a complete bust in terms of Xmas preparation. As a side note: Denver is awesome. We went to the Denver Festivus, a beer festival, in an old hangar which doubled as a museum. They had all local beers and even I, who usually doesn't care for beer, found a few I like. We also went hiking at Red Rocks which has an amphitheater built into the side of the the rocks. Pictures are below if you're interested.

Now though, Christmas with all the impending madness is around the corner and I am slightly freaking out. In addition to the usual amount of family, I have friends in town so I will be pretty busy. This is both good and bad. Good because I get to hang out with some people I rarely see anymore. Bad because I am so close to being done with this book that I can practically taste it, and I just can't physically find the time to write the ending. Grr. I just need two days of steady writing time. Two! I think I could finish if I had just that much time, but I have so many impending plans that I don't know if  I'll swing it.

Wish me luck. For now, enjoy the photos while I try to carve some writing time into my schedule.