Emuzines

The holiday season has officially begun (in David’s and my opinion, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons begin on November 1)! The next few weeks hold a lot of excitement–a lot of celebrating.

Nik and I head to Amesbury on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. We are SO excited, and have been so for weeks and weeks. It will be Nik’s second time to New England. Seeing as how he was swayed enough by the area last time to hint at wanting a house out there, I know he’ll have a good time again. He also gets to be reunited with my cousin Billy, who he gets along really well with. Good thing Billy is bringing his girlfriend so I’ll still get some Nik time in! And I always have a great time there. It always feels like home. I get to see everybody, relax in Memere and Pepere’s house, and eat Memere’s wonderful food!

The week after we get back to California will be hectic, but with a lot of fun things. Class wraps up that week as well. On Friday, my friends and I are going out to Bistro 33 for our thrice yearly quarter-end celebration. We have developed a tradition of going out–always to Bistro, it seems–at the end of every quarter to celebrate. It’s even more welcome now since we’ve dispersed a bit in terms of classes. I only have classes this quarter with David, Abby, and Kyle. Not enough time to see Maciel, April, and Natalie. Here we are at one of our old quarter end celebrations. This is actually at the end of our first quarter–the bootcamp of the program. We had shots this night. We earned them.

As you can maybe see, the fall quarter quarter end happens to be our gift exchange too. Last year we did a White Elephant, and exchanged and “stole” the gifts. This year, since we know each other so much better, I organized a Secret Santa, and we’re shopping for a specific person. Nik drew names and passed them around.

The next day is our second monthly First Saturday Dinner and a Movie. This one will be chili in bread bowls, cornbread, and apple turnovers made with Memere’s homemade apple jam. We’ll probably watch a holiday movie, but votes on which one are pretty spread around, so I have to tie-break.

Lots of other things are planned–drinks with our stats professor, the Mind Institute Thank You party, etc. Can’t wait!

I tend to refrain from updating until I have huge stretches of time in which to do a post justice…and that doesn’t happen.  So here is a list of recent happenings.  Time may soon permit me to expand on some of these…

1.  Nik and I had a wonderful, relaxing, food-consuming, amazing, beautiful, great-company time in Amesbury.  Nik is working on a post about it, but Happening #3 got in the way.

2.  It took us 3 days to fly home.  Our plane almost crashed.  It was traumatizing.  We also had broken planes, delayed flights, cancelled flights, bad weather, poorly rated pilots, etc.  We were stranded, after our trauma which made me sick to my stomach (fear, not bounciness), in Phoenix for a night, then we were stranded in Las Vegas for a night.  We thought we deserved a treat, so we stayed in a penthouse suite on the strip.  The shower, to say the least, was incredible.

3.  Nik is sick.  He’s been in bed for 2 days.  He gets to win the “No JoJo on the bed game” (or rather, “Yes JoJo on the bed game”), so they are both quite pleased.  She’s exhausted from Happening #4, so it’s suiting her well.

4.  JoJo had a great time at Wag Hotel.  She has a reputation there, and when we called during the trip, they said, “Oh, JOJO…” and when we picked her up, the workers all emerged from their offices to talk about her.  She’s in the “High Energy Group.”

5.  I am off to my last day of class for the quarter!  After class, my friends and I are going out to have a gift exchange and celebrate our survival!  YAY!

Hi All!

I have been trying to write a Mandi’s Visit post for quite awhile, but for some reason the picture uploading on the site is messed up, and we haven’t been able to fix it yet.  So, instead of posting pictures directly with a story for them all, like I wanted, I’ll post a link to my Facebook album, where you can see the pictures from Mandi’s visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2008978&l=2ec38&id=1262058331  We had a great time.  On Friday, which was Halloween, we baked pumpkin nut cups and dressed JoJo up in her spider costume (using lots of bribes), then went to eat in downtown Sacramento when Nik came home from work.  On Saturday, we explored San Francisco in the rain.  It was a fun and adventurous day, ending in a dark, rainy, and deserted forest, locked out of the car.  On Sunday, we went to Napa…went to an incredible lunch, a couple of wineries, the state park, and ended the day shopping at the outlets.  It was great having her here–we all had fun!  We’re already planning our next adventures which will include Alcatraz and the Redwood Forest!

So everything is going really well.  Schoolwork, while still busy, is getting easier to get through more quickly.  I think most of us feel that, as we’ve commented that we can finally stick our heads up for air.  In fact, our cohort had some fun at the world’s largest corn maze this weekend: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009269&l=8c83c&id=1262058331  Out in about 45 minutes, muddy and laughing!

I am getting extremely excited for Thanksgiving.  It’ll be Nik’s first time in Amesbury.  Today we went November-in-Amesbury shopping, and were pretty successful…except for shirts, since wool makes us both itch…and all warm clothes are at least part wool!  Nevertheless, we both came away with too much to carry, which is a good sign.

Speaking of Nik, he’s got a job…has been working for maybe a month or so now.  I wish he would post more (!), but I think he’s pretty tired from working and spends his free time relaxing in other ways.  But…just to let anyone curious know, he has found a job.

Ok, time for me to get to relaxing…