Holy Colee!

So I am still in the land of spotty phone service and limited internet. I thought I would use this post to update those of you who have been involved with my nonblog drama of possibly moving to Phoenix.
The update is, I am not going. I have turned the job down and chosen to stay with Convergys.

As a side note, I have been selected to participate in a the Future Leaders program. I am not really sure what it means yet, but my VP tells me it is an excellent opportunity, and he is feeling pretty good that his project was chosen to fill 2 of the 4 slots for our unit this year, which includes 20+ projects. So I guess that means I will be going to Cincinatti for the last week of February. It is a year long program, so I am sure you will be hearing more about it.

Today I was reminded why I don’t have pets. My mom has a cat. Her name is Stripes. She got her about 4 months ago. Technically she is annoying, but attached I am, and I have only been with her about 4 times. I like her because it means my mom isn’t sitting home alone all the time. She is an indoor cat and we just had her spayed and de-clawed. We let her out when we got home from Logan this afternoon. I went to let her in a couple of hours later to find her lifeless on the front lawn. The damn neighbor’s dog killed my kitty. She didn't even have a chance to wear the new name tag she got in her Christmas stocking. My mom is heart broken :(

I think Christmas on Sunday has pros and cons.

Pro
It is fitting that we honor Christ’s birth on the day He set aside for us to honor Him every week.
Christmas is a day that we spend with our families, so is Sunday.
It means that Monday is the bank/corporate holiday and any time the week is shorter and the weekend longer is a good thing.


Con
The kids (and parents) were up all night the night before so everyone sleeps through church.
It means that New Years is also on a Sunday. If you have a family that is very letter of the law on Sabbath Day activities, it means that you can not be at a party at midnight on Saturday night. (aka, my family is having their "New Year's Eve party on the 30th... What the dill?"

So, Dav's back in town. It's funny. I see him more than I see most friends that live in the same state, and some that live in the same city, for that matter. I picked him up from the airport and we made our way to his parent's home in Liberty. Liberty is normally about an hour north of SLC up Ogden Canyon. Well, we hit the snow storm on our way up. It seemed to hit all of the sudden and we were sliding pretty good on a very frozen I-15. We were able to make it to his home with out incident, and it only took about 2 hours.
Not only was it their Christmas party, it was also Grandma Bessie's 90th birthday. Dav's family is great. I had not actually met most of the kids that were there. They are all super cute. The new baby Tom is soooo happy and adorable and the older kids are great. I am completely unbiased, by the way- this is not my family. His niece Bria is just stunning. If I can get him to send me a picture (hint hint), I'll post it here. Until then you'll just have to believe me. Beautiful girl.
All in all a great way to spend a Sunday night. I woke up this morning to find myself not going anywhere until the sun came up and the snowplows came through. There are worse places to be stuck than eating breakfast with the fam :)

I think my very favorite thing in the world is having people come visit. Friday night I got a call from one of my very favorite visitors :) I had pretty much written Friday off as meh, but a visit was all it took to turn it into the best day of the week. I had a visitor on Thursday, too. Come to think of it- It's been a pretty darn good week!

Tomorrow I am going to Dav's family Christmas party :) I am excited because it is actually the same time as my family Christmas party that I was not going to be able to attend.

Christmas is a good time for families. This Christmas I get to spend over a week at home. I still have to work, but I get to do it in Dingle instead of SLC. I'm pretty psyched about it; though I am still trying to plot out my day after Christmas shopping ;)

I believe I may be one of the world's worst gift wrappers. For the life of me I can not cut a straight line or get the "perfect" amount of paper. I spent most of the night cutting extra paper off the packages, then on the last one, I undercut and had to cover the end... No, I am not one of those people who actually cares enough to start over with another piece of paper.

My philosophy is that they are just gonna tear it open and throw it away anyway- what is the point?

I really need to invest in more gift bags ;)

So... I just found out that my roommates are leaving. Their goal is to be out by the end of the month. Now, this doesn't actually affect my life all that much. Luckily we signed seperate contracts. In my perfect world, the landlord wouldn't be able to fill the other rooms and I could just live by myself for the next 5 months. I'm pretty sure that won't happen. Anyway, if you want to live with the coolest roommate ever (and most humble)- the rent is great, the location is great, the house is ok, the neighbors suck - let me know :)

Other than that, not much going on. I've had to take my first sick day since February, this week. Actually I took a day and a half. I've decided "sick" day actually translates to "work from home" day in the CVG dictionary. The only thing I've accomplished is getting further behind on my Christmas preparations, and a little extra sleep.

BAKING!!!! Holidays give me an excuse to bake. Today I made 7 different kinds of treats. Meringue Cookies, Cream Cheese Brownies, Double Decker Fudge, Chocolate Biscotti, Raspberry Ribbons, Thumbprints, and Lemon Tea Cookies. Of course, there has to be one thing that doesn't work out like you want it to.... today that was the brownies. I baked them longer than I was told and the tops were brown, but the brownie part forgot to cook. They taste great, but most brownie batter does.

So that is how I spent my Saturday. Monday I will take them to work and put my coworkers in sugar comas.

Tomorrow Matt has agreed to let me use my pretty plates for a random Sunday dinner. He humors me. I appreciate it.

Tonight we held fast to an about 10 years now Christmas Tradition. We attended The Forgotten Carols. This is a musical, for lack of a better word, about some of the less remembered Christmas stories and of course, songs about such. My favorite Carol to sing is "I Cry the Day that I Take the Tree Down" because in my heart I always wanted to be a jazz singer... which kind of ties in to what my actual favorite Carol is. It is Handel's Carol. It is the story of a dream that Handel had about trying out for the choir that was to herald our Savior's birth. He sang and sang and sang, but he couldn't really sing and didn't make the choir. As he is leaving he asks the choir master to hear the song in his heart. The music from "The Messiah" then plays. Angel Handel is told that although he still can not sing in the choir, his song will be heard. More music from "The Messiah."

Now, the reason this is my favorite... All my life I have been surrounded by people who are so obviously talented. Many are beautiful singers, some are artists, others have such passion for things you can't help but enjoy them too, some are excellent listeners, some tell jokes, some just have a way of making people feel loved. I have often felt just like the little angel Handel. His carol gives me hope. Some day, I will figure out what it is that I am meant to do here. I will figure out what my gift is, who I am to share it with, and what good I am meant to do. My prayer is that I am not filling my life with so much "busy work" that I will miss it, and when I figure out what it is that I will brave enough to do it.

Yeah, so driving...around and around KC, MO. We finally got to actually start our day at around 6 PM. We went to the Plaza. The lights are beautiful, but OOOOOOOH so cold. We did a little shopping, but eventually we gave up. The restaurant lines were so very long that we decided to head over to "The Blue Room" which is a little Jazz club. We got there before it opened so we went to dinner at "The Peach Tree Restaurant" I got a little soul food (cat fish and fried chicken). It's a good thing our waiter was hot, cuz wow, he was slow. When we made it back to the club we realized it was geeky old white guy night. We stuck around for a bit and made fun of some of the biggest geeks, then we decided we needed a little more hoppin'.

Our next location was "The Beaumont Club." It was mostly a country, but it also played a little hip hop and we had a fantastic time making fools of ourselves. Really just an enjoyable time.

As we were leaving, Shar's friend Lamarr called. He needed a ride back to where he had left his car earlier that day. So we went to pick him up and apparently we got roped into running his errands while we were there. When I say errands, I mean, he took us with him to pick up his 3:30 AM booty call. How tacky is that???

Today was dedicated to football. We spent the day at this really cute couple's house in KC,KS. Really nice folks. It was Shar's tax school teacher and her husband. I have now watched 2 football games this season. That is double my quota for the year. I guess I am good ;)

Yesterday was a day of faces. It is still weird to me that we can work with people everyday, but never know what they look like. Well, a slew of the people that I work with everyday are located about a half hour from Shar's house. She humored me and took me out to meet them. Oddly enough, my imagination was not tooooo far off of reality. It was fun to have a conversation with them face to face instead of over the phone.

We then went to Shar's new work place so I would have faces to put with the stories she tells. She does, indeed, work with characters. I am a little jealous. The atmosphere in her building was so relaxed and familiar. I remember work feeling like family. It made it much more tolerable. If anything was to work as a tool for recruiting me, that would be it.

Well, then we went for a little of what KC is famous for. BBQ! There is a reason they are famous for it, and I enjoyed it a little too much. We found BBQ sauce in some odd places afterwords. (Yes Dav, kind of like you and grits)

Against everyone's protests we then went shopping on Prospect St. We took a dumb boy with us though, so I think we will go back today after Shar's tax test with out him.

Clarkus P. - I don't have your email address. Can you hook a girl up???

Question for the cosmos... Why is Kansas City in Missouri? While I do not know the answer, here I am, eating nachos from the KC version of Betos "Panchos." I got here about 5, waited for Shar to get out of traffic til 6, then we went to church with Shar's friend Cassandra. I must admit, I've never been the minority at church before. There were 9 white folk. 9. I've also never been to church on a Thursday night, or been to a service where it was ok to respond aloud to the questions coming from the pulpit. I liked it. I felt so welcome. Everyone came up to meet us before and talked to us after to see if we enjoyed it and encouraged us to come back. I am pretty sure every child I saw tonight is the cutest child I have ever seen. If kidnapping weren't illegal I would have brought at least 2 of them home with me.
What a great start to my weekend with Shar in KC!