Dec. 31: Month in review

Buh-bye, December.

special days i celebrated this month and how:

• Well, duh. Christmas. It was pretty great.
• For our celebration with the Nienhuises, Sonya did a Grinch feast—roast beast, Who hash, Who buns, Grinch bean casserole, Grinch salad with artichoke hearts (two sizes too small), and Who pudding… our contribution was the Grinch cocktails, which were green and contained booze and that means they were good and that’s all that matters.
• On Christmas Eve, we did our traditional Chinese dinner. Yum.
• We had a few ideas for what we’d do on Christmas Day, but it turned out that we all stayed in our jammies and spent the day enjoying our gifts. No complaints.

i saw things with my eyes:

• Guardians of the Galaxy. Action movies are probably my least favorite kinds of movies, but I like Chris Pratt and the movie didn’t totally suck. Best part: the Howard the Duck cameo after the credits. Did you know Howard the Duck was a Marvel character? Me neither! Crazy.
• I’ve been watching The Comeback on HBO. The Valerie character drives me nuts, so I spread the episodes out over quite a bit of time. The last few episodes really were well done. It’s a funny show, and deserved its return to TV.
• Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. If you’re not watching it, well, I’ll watch it enough for both of us and I’m totally fine with that.
• We went through the regular Christmastime viewings of A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, The Polar Express, Elf, Olive, the Other Reindeer, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, and White Christmas. It wouldn’t be the holidays without seeing those movies at least fourteen times each.
• I started reading Yes, Please, by Amy Poehler. Love her.

this month’s good and bad:

• Good: Christmas was fun.
• Bad: we were all sick for way too long. Vic got hit hardest.
• Good: I’m done with physical therapy! I hated physical therapy! I mean, it wasn’t as bad as breaking my ankle, but it still sucked. And yes, it did some good, and yes, my range of motion has improved, but you are totally ruining my cheer over being done so just STAHP.
• Bad: my mother-in-law had her hip replaced. That makes it sound like no big deal—“she had her hip replaced,” like “she got a new blender”—but, of course, it wasn’t just a teensy little procedure. Once they decided it needed to be done, she wanted to get it over with, so the surgery was just before Christmas and kinda messed up their celebration. BUT she feels much better, so the good part is that she’s on her way to dealing with much less pain than she’s had in the past year.
• Good: we got new iPhones. New gadgets are mostly not annoying. I’m loving the camera quality most, I think. Victor likes the bigger screen.
• Bad: my blog design got all messed up. I noticed some weird stuff a few months ago, but yesterday it was completely farked. It wasn’t me trying to tweak things; it was Blogger and that gives me frowny face. I’ll work on it. Eventually.
• Good: Mother Mary and I got a bunch of house projects done while she was here for Christmas. I love feeling productive, but I especially love my extremely clean floors, the new things in our family room, and my very organized kitchen.
• Bad: our kids’ winter break seems especially long this year, and I know that makes me a rotten mom, but I really, really hope they go back to school soon.

i likes to share pics I’ve found on the ‘net:

 

This one’s for you, Dina. (And me.)

 

sooo… what’s next?

I’m going to try to kick-start my blog back into action by posting every day in January. I know, right?! Don’t worry, you don’t have to read it.

This year wasn’t our worst one ever, but it won’t exactly be featured prominently in our memory books, either. Bring on 2015!