Catching up
It's been a while since my last entry--so long in fact--that I don't know if anyone still checks in every now and again. Well, I try to write when there's actually something interesting going on in my life but after 3 months or so, my life is still boring as could be and I thought that I should scratch something down before the New Year.
Christmas came and went so quickly. Eric and I flew home to visit "the fam" on December 13th and stayed for four nights. Buying and sending Christmas gifts this year was a bit of a challenge. When I could, I shopped on Amazon and took advantage of their free shipping and just shipped the presents straight to PA. For all the other gifts, I wrapped them and shipped them via UPS about 2 weeks before our trip. That way we didn't have to worry about them at the airport plus we had way way too much stuff. It worked out pretty nicely except for one broken frame that I got for my Grandma with one of my recent Texas photos. The frame was salvageable and all I had to do was buy a piece of replacement glass. The worst part was cleaning the microscopic shards of glass from all the other gifts in the box. The photo got scratched a bit, but not enough for Grandma to tell.
The creative gift of 2007 was this framed name art . If you look at each picture, you can see that each one resembles a letter and when strung together, they form names. My parents (last name Deyarmin), my godparents (last name Markulin), Eric's Grandparents (last name Dablock) and my sister (last name Elkin) each got one. It took Eric and I one Sunday afternoon to find all the letters. You can imagine the looks that I got...like "Why is she standing on top of her truck to take a picture of the rafters?" (letter N) or "I wonder what little adorable creature is in that pot that she's so interested in?" (letter O...she actually ran over to peak inside when I left). We actually heard some girl at a restaurant say "Is she taking a picture of the chair?, with a confused intonation in her voice (letter E --not the one shown below). I knew that I sort of stood out and it was a lot of fun watching people reactions. Eric was a lot of help pointing out letter but mentioned on the ride home that it was the worst day of our marriage. What a little trooper. Let me know if you or anyone else is interesting in buying one. Each letter is about 3X5 but they could be larger (4X6) or smaller (wallet) depending on the length of your name and how big you want the final piece. It would be great for first names to (especially for kids). Here's an example of "Deyarmin", my maiden name. Click on it for more detail. The finished peice is matted with multiple openings and then framed.
Our trip home and coming back had its exciting moments that you can read more about on Eric's blog. I won't bore you with the same stories. My only true complaint though was getting stuck sitting in the last aisle on the back of the plane....AGAIN. I don't know what it is, but the last time we came home we got stuck sitting there going and coming! You'd think that it might be nice...but that row of seats doesn't recline and when your flying home in the middle of the night, it's a nice feature to have.
True Christmas, Dec 25th, was truly uneventful. I didn't even get shower until 8:00 that night! I really just laid around all day long. We did manage to whip up a veggie pot pie and enjoyed it very much. So much, Eric requested that we make it a tradition...I reminded him that we will NOT have a Christmas tradition...our tradition is to celebrate Christmas with family. Hopefully, we'll be home next year to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day with our families. We did get to go to Austin's famous "Trail of Lights". It's about a 2 mile tree-lined paved trail through Zilker park with every tree wrapped to the max with lights. Very cool. And they had food stands and Christmas music playing along the way. I'll post the pics but they aren't the greatest.
We were planning on taking a horse drawn carriage ride though downtown Austin on Christmas Eve but I didn't want to since I was on-call. We're postponing those plans and will hopefully get around to it before they take all the Christmas lights down. Does that sound like something that you'd enjoy doing (Mom/Dad or Tara/Brian/Joshua) when you come to visit? It's about $45 per person (not sure about children). It seems like a better fit for you guys rather than the Segway tour. Something just tells me that me that Dad would be returning to PA with a broken leg and a $500 repair bill for the busted Segway. If he can still manage to wreck his bike in his own yard just a year ago, I'm not to confident that cruising around Austin on a Segway would be the best fit. Walking is sometimes a challenge! JK--not really though.
Thanks for all of the presents guys. They all arrived safely today...and that's pretty impressive feat considering that I depleted the worlds resource of clay with all of the pottery that I got. I love all of it though! I'm waiting until Eric gets home for Bentley to unwrap his Christmas gift from Deb and Tom. He loved the cookies from my parents!
Well I'm sure that I won't write before the New Year...so have a safe and happy one!
The entrance
Giant 155 foot Christmas tree strung from a moon tower
Favorite toy...ever...he slept with it, clutching it in his arms
Given me the business ( I didn't know that corn is only for cows---duh!)
Christmas came and went so quickly. Eric and I flew home to visit "the fam" on December 13th and stayed for four nights. Buying and sending Christmas gifts this year was a bit of a challenge. When I could, I shopped on Amazon and took advantage of their free shipping and just shipped the presents straight to PA. For all the other gifts, I wrapped them and shipped them via UPS about 2 weeks before our trip. That way we didn't have to worry about them at the airport plus we had way way too much stuff. It worked out pretty nicely except for one broken frame that I got for my Grandma with one of my recent Texas photos. The frame was salvageable and all I had to do was buy a piece of replacement glass. The worst part was cleaning the microscopic shards of glass from all the other gifts in the box. The photo got scratched a bit, but not enough for Grandma to tell.
The creative gift of 2007 was this framed name art . If you look at each picture, you can see that each one resembles a letter and when strung together, they form names. My parents (last name Deyarmin), my godparents (last name Markulin), Eric's Grandparents (last name Dablock) and my sister (last name Elkin) each got one. It took Eric and I one Sunday afternoon to find all the letters. You can imagine the looks that I got...like "Why is she standing on top of her truck to take a picture of the rafters?" (letter N) or "I wonder what little adorable creature is in that pot that she's so interested in?" (letter O...she actually ran over to peak inside when I left). We actually heard some girl at a restaurant say "Is she taking a picture of the chair?, with a confused intonation in her voice (letter E --not the one shown below). I knew that I sort of stood out and it was a lot of fun watching people reactions. Eric was a lot of help pointing out letter but mentioned on the ride home that it was the worst day of our marriage. What a little trooper. Let me know if you or anyone else is interesting in buying one. Each letter is about 3X5 but they could be larger (4X6) or smaller (wallet) depending on the length of your name and how big you want the final piece. It would be great for first names to (especially for kids). Here's an example of "Deyarmin", my maiden name. Click on it for more detail. The finished peice is matted with multiple openings and then framed.
Our trip home and coming back had its exciting moments that you can read more about on Eric's blog. I won't bore you with the same stories. My only true complaint though was getting stuck sitting in the last aisle on the back of the plane....AGAIN. I don't know what it is, but the last time we came home we got stuck sitting there going and coming! You'd think that it might be nice...but that row of seats doesn't recline and when your flying home in the middle of the night, it's a nice feature to have.
True Christmas, Dec 25th, was truly uneventful. I didn't even get shower until 8:00 that night! I really just laid around all day long. We did manage to whip up a veggie pot pie and enjoyed it very much. So much, Eric requested that we make it a tradition...I reminded him that we will NOT have a Christmas tradition...our tradition is to celebrate Christmas with family. Hopefully, we'll be home next year to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day with our families. We did get to go to Austin's famous "Trail of Lights". It's about a 2 mile tree-lined paved trail through Zilker park with every tree wrapped to the max with lights. Very cool. And they had food stands and Christmas music playing along the way. I'll post the pics but they aren't the greatest.
We were planning on taking a horse drawn carriage ride though downtown Austin on Christmas Eve but I didn't want to since I was on-call. We're postponing those plans and will hopefully get around to it before they take all the Christmas lights down. Does that sound like something that you'd enjoy doing (Mom/Dad or Tara/Brian/Joshua) when you come to visit? It's about $45 per person (not sure about children). It seems like a better fit for you guys rather than the Segway tour. Something just tells me that me that Dad would be returning to PA with a broken leg and a $500 repair bill for the busted Segway. If he can still manage to wreck his bike in his own yard just a year ago, I'm not to confident that cruising around Austin on a Segway would be the best fit. Walking is sometimes a challenge! JK--not really though.
Thanks for all of the presents guys. They all arrived safely today...and that's pretty impressive feat considering that I depleted the worlds resource of clay with all of the pottery that I got. I love all of it though! I'm waiting until Eric gets home for Bentley to unwrap his Christmas gift from Deb and Tom. He loved the cookies from my parents!
Well I'm sure that I won't write before the New Year...so have a safe and happy one!
The entrance
Giant 155 foot Christmas tree strung from a moon tower
Favorite toy...ever...he slept with it, clutching it in his arms
Given me the business ( I didn't know that corn is only for cows---duh!)
posted by Erica L. Christopher at
6:27 PM
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