Sunday, January 4 was Rachel's sixteenth birthday (wow, I feel so old - I remember when she was born and now she is sixteen!). We drove up to Ellerbe Friday after lunch and got there in time to go out to our favorite Ellerbe restaurant, Mi Casita. Then we played the "A Christmas Story" edition of Monopoly - that was pretty hilarious.
We celebrated Rachel's birthday on Saturday January 3. We went out for a birthday dinner at Chili's (both Rachel's and Cy's favorite restaurant). Everything was going smoothly until the waitress came to refill our water glasses and Mom said, "Rachel needs more water because today's her sixteenth birthday." (Rachel had asked us not to tell them it was her birthday.) So a few minutes later a bunch of them came out clapping and singing, and Rachel's face turned the same shade of red as her sweater. The free dessert seemed to make up for it though.
When we got back to the house, Rachel had a party with a few of her friends (think Strong Bad's Teen Girl Squad). She opened presents and Mom made her wear a Sweet Sixteen tiara and sash (as you can tell from the picture below, she wasn't terribly thrilled about that part at first). We ended the party with a few rounds of Apples to Apples - me, Cy, Mom, and 5 teenage girls. Good times. It seemed like Rachel had a really good birthday. Happy Sweet Sixteen Rachel!
We decided (rather spontaneously) on New Year's Eve day to paint our dining room. We have been wanting to do this for quite some time, but just keep putting it off because the shape of the room (with its multiple arched entrances) and the high ceiling make it kind of a daunting task. But we decided to go for it. We spent most of New Year's Eve day painting and got up early on New Year's Day to finish up and touch up a few spots before we had company over for dinner in the afternoon.
We were very pleased with how it turned out. We love the colors (Cy picked them out!) and think it really spruces up our dining room and makes it quite elegant! :)
This year was a Shealy Christmas year, so we stayed at home for the holidays. Cy and I somehow had tons of vacation days left, even after our mid-year trip to Jamaica, so we were able to take two full weeks off from work. We got very spoiled - staying up late and sleeping in - which made going back to work really hard.We had a great Christmas together. On Christmas Eve day we took it easy, doing some work around the house, riding bicycles, and just hanging out having fun. We then went out for dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Frank and Andrea and then went to a Christmas Eve service at our church (two other churches were invited as well and the place was packed). It was a very nice service.
On Christmas, we opened presents at home first thing in the morning. As you can see, Cy went with a pirate theme for my presents. :)
After we opened presents, we headed to Wes and Kelly's to open some more presents all together and to eat a big breakfast. After that we went over to Frank & Andrea's for some soup and hung out for a few hours, during which we had a marathon Wii Golf tournament. (I won't divulge the scores, but I will say that surprisingly, I was the winner!) Then Wes, Kelly, & Noah came over and we had some burgers and opened yet more presents! It was a great day (a bit exhausting, because there were so many presents!) with family.
For quite a while now, I've been meaning to post some pictures of our newly (well, not so new now -it's been a couple of months) decorated living room. It's been an ongoing project for a while and it's finally finished! It was a huge undertaking, since the room is huge and has 12 foot ceilings. But Cy painted the whole thing himself, and it looks great! We decided pretty quickly after moving in that we wanted to paint the living room the same sage green color that we had in our condo, because we really liked the color. Everything came together when I found some Roman shades and matching pillow covers at Pottery Barn that had a pattern with red, green, and yellow in it, to tie all the colors of our living room together. It's finally done at last, and we love it. We think it looks great!
On Saturday, Cy left early with his dad and they came back with a new bicycle for me - a surprise gift from Frank & Andrea! I had been wanting a bicyle for a while - I despise running and was trying to come up with other ways to work out that were not so. . .well, basically just that they weren't running, since I hate it. So I had asked for a bike for Christmas. Imagine my surprise to get the bike early, and not as a Christmas gift!
We got everything all adjusted and I took it for a little spin around the cul-de-sac. Then I ran in the house and changed into some more comfortable clothes (jeans are not particularly great for bicycle riding), and I went for what probably amounted to a 5-mile bicycle ride. It was fantastic - I haven't been on a bike in years, so I didn't realize how much I would enjoy it.
I was pretty sore the next day, but I went for a ride again last night (Monday) and felt a little better. Last night was a great ride too (even though it was cold) because it was twilight and everyone had their Christmas lights and decorations on in full force. I really enjoyed just breezing through the neighborhood taking in all the holiday sights (and getting some exercise at the same time).
Apparently I almost had a mishap though - Cy was out running at the same time I was riding and he told me later that when I rounded the corner at the traffic circle, a dog started frantically chasing me, and then a kid started frantically chasing the dog. Cy was concerned because the dog was going quite fast, and he was afraid the dog was going to get a piece of my back tire and take me down. I, on the other hand, was completely oblivious. I had my headphones on and was just enjoying the ride - I never even saw the dog or the kid. And fortunately, I was not knocked down from behind unexpectedly by a random dog. All in all, a successful bike ride.
Last Wednesday, we loaded up the Mini and drove up to see the Bradshaw/Brown clan for the Thanksgiving holiday. We left Wednesday morning and drove to Ellerbe, where we picked up Rachel for school, then met up with my parents to caravan up to Bedford, Virginia to my grandparents' house. It was a long trip, but we made it, and it was great to see everyone. We hadn't seen this part of the family since last Christmas.
For Thanksgiving itself (after watching Rick Astley Rickroll us all at the Macy's Parade), we drove over to my uncle & aunt's house for dinner. It was quite a feast! There were two kinds of dressing, several kinds of cranberries, and all sorts of other things, including a giant turkey leg for Greg. After dinner, we relaxed by playing a couple hours of Guitar Hero in the basement.
The day after Thanksgiving, a bunch of us went to the movie theater, where we split into two groups and watched Twilight and Quantum of Solace. Cy and I went with Rachel and Uncle Jeff to see Twilight (we had already seen Bond). It was pretty cute - kind of cheesy, but fun.
Our whirlwind trip ended on Saturday with another 8 hour car trip so that we could get back to Charleston so I could finish my NaNoWriMo novel and. . .my dreaded term paper. Overall, it was a good Thanksgiving - it was great to see family after such a long time. (And no one set the table on fire this year, which was also a plus.)
Last night at midnight was the deadline of the 10th annual National Novel Writing Month. Although I successfully reached my 50,000 word goal by Nov. 30 in both 2006 and 2007, this year was a bit more difficult. Initially, I decided I wasn't even going to try to participate this year. Between working full time and attending graduate school, I just wasn't sure I could handle it all (plus, if I don't get to read a good 5 novels a week, I start getting cranky). With a term paper looming over my head for a Dec. 3 deadline, I just didn't think NaNoWriMo was doable. Then I talked to about three other people who were doing it, and I found out that this year was the 10th anniversary. Well, with all the hype of it being the 10th anniversary, of course I had least had to give it a shot!
I actually didn't decide to go ahead and go for it until 3 or 4 days into November. On November 1, the start of NaNoWriMo, I had written a couple of thousand words simply out of the desire to procrastinate, as I found noveling far more appealing than working on my term paper (which is what I was supposed to be doing). But a couple of days went by, and school was taking up all my time, so I basically gave up on the novel. It just didn't seem possible.
But then I caught my second wind and came back a few days later with a vengeance (and the desire yet again to procrastinate). Though encouraged to write a sequel about everyone's favorite veggie vampire, Clay, I had been wanting to expand on the short story I had published in the Citadel's literary magazine last year. I had to cut so much already just to publish it in The Shako, and there were so many other side plots I wanted to explore.
I lagged a couple of thousand words behind through most of November, and never really caught up until yesterday, when I forced myself to sit down and churn out the 3,000 words I needed to finish. And it went really well. I reached my goal, and was pleasantly surprised that I made it (I honestly believed this year would be the first year I wouldn't finish).
My "novel" is nowhere near finished, but I'd like to keep working on it. I felt good about some of what I wrote (not all of it, of course - it needs a lot of cleaning up), and I think I could really do something with it (other than relegating it to my growing collection of half-finished novels). Maybe this one will be an Oprah's Book Club pick someday. . .ha!!!
Sunday, January 4 was Rachel's sixteenth birthday (wow, I feel so old - I remember when she was born and now she is sixteen!). We drove up to Ellerbe Friday after lunch and got there in time to go out to our favorite Ellerbe restaurant, Mi Casita. Then we played the "A Christmas Story" edition of Monopoly - that was pretty hilarious.
When we got back to the house, Rachel had a party with a few of her friends (think Strong Bad's Teen Girl Squad). She opened presents and Mom made her wear a Sweet Sixteen tiara and sash (as you can tell from the picture below, she wasn't terribly thrilled about that part at first). We ended the party with a few rounds of Apples to Apples - me, Cy, Mom, and 5 teenage girls. Good times. It seemed like Rachel had a really good birthday. Happy Sweet Sixteen Rachel!
