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Sunday, December 30, 2007
Hello from Hollywood, Florida
Just a really quick hello from Florida. We got up at 3:20 a.m. today (ugh) so we could catch our early morning flight to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It's nice to see my parents again. They have been enjoying their first week near Ft. Myers Beach and are not looking forward to going back to the cold at the end of this week.
The weather is absolutely gorgeous here right now. It's totally summer-like, in the 80'ies. We even went swimming in the ocean today. Our hotel is right across from the ocean and our room faces the beach which is cool. Our first day here has been really nice. The weather is supposed to cool down over the next few days but even then it will still be much warmer then it would be in Connecticut so that's ok. :)
I really need to get going now so we can figure out what to have for dinner. :) Can't believe tomorrow is New Year's Eve already. On Wednesday we will probably take a day trip down to Key West.
Posted by Hanna at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Merry Belated Christmas ! :)
So here's my Christmas post. I know it's a little overdue but what can I say ? The holidays always tend to be a busy time. I hope everyone had a really nice Christmas. Mine was very nice. :) We opened our gifts in the morning with Mike's sister and her two kids Shannon (17) and Erik (15). Santa was very good to me - as always. :) DVDs, books, a picture frame, Christmas tree ornaments, bath salts and a really pretty diamond-aquamarine pendant/necklace.
In the afternoon we went to Mike and Kristina's aunt's house where we had chips+dip, cheese+crackers and baked ziti along with wine, Bailey's and cookies for dessert. It was a really nice day.
I also took some pictures of her tree and fireplace so I could post them here for you guys. I would so love to have a fireplace. Wouldn't that be cozy ? :)
Posted by Hanna at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Almost Christmas
It's almost Christmas. :) Can't believe it's Christmas Eve tomorrow. I do have to work but I told everyone in my department that we should be able to finish up around 3. I will probably end up being there till about 5:30 but that's ok. We will have a quiet evening at home, have some snacks/hors d'oeuvrs, wine and do an "Alias" marathon.
Posted by Hanna at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Cozy Day
This Garfield cartoon is from last year but I still think it's very cute and very fitting. This is what ALWAYS happens to me when I am trying to read a book or write letters or anything else like that. It usually only takes Oliver a few minutes to figure out that I am sitting on the couch with a blanket over my lap. Cats ! :)
It's pretty much how my day went all day today. :) I was off from work today and spent most of the day watching the Hallmark Channel Christmas movie "The Note", some recorded Rachael Ray shows and catching up with my mail. And of course Oliver was right there with me almost the whole time. Every time I got up he moved so he could steal my "warm spot" and I had to move him back. Silly cat. :)
Posted by Hanna at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Christmas Decorations
We decorated our tree Monday night and it came out very nicely. I always enjoy decorating the tree, listening to Christmas CD's, picking out which ornaments to put on the tree. It's a fun tradition and each year you can add new ornaments. Each decoration/ornament has some kind of meaning/memory attached to it which makes it fun to pick through the boxes.
I also took some pictures of my little Christmas village so you can all see it. I absolutely adore it and wish I could live there. ;) Wouldn't that be cozy ?
The weekend flew by so quickly. Can't believe where the two days went. Saturday we ran some errands and then headed over to our friends John and Kim's house in the afternoon for a Christmas party. We had a really fun time and didn't get home until after midnight. :)
Today we didn't get up until shortly after noon. Had some lunch and then started talking to my friend Joanne in England on MSN Messenger. It's always fun to catch up with her so was online with her most of the afternoon. After that managed to write at least 2 letters. I am getting really behind on my mail again ... sorry everybody. :(
Posted by Hanna at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Let it snow
It's snowing like crazy outside. This seems to be the first big storm for the season. We are supposed to get anywhere from 5 to 10 inches. Right now the flakes are really big and the snow is coming down pretty hard.
Luckily everyone showed up for work so I am not crazy short-handed which makes my day a lot better. Getting home will be interesting later though. Plus they are forecasting another "event" for Saturday/Sunday. Nobody seems to be sure what it will be yet, rain, snow, ice, .. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Mail update. No letters have gone out. :( Received letters from/still owe replies to: Barbara/Austria, Jessica/DE, Celia/MA, Tizz/Denmark, Nicki/Australia, Deanna/PA, Charles/TN, Fiona/Scotland and Jetta/Finland. Also still owe a re-write to Natalia/Poland.
Posted by Hanna at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Dinner and a show
And another week has come to an end. :) I managed to finish the rest of my Christmas cards today so mailing those out tomorrow. I am going to hold on to a couple cards just so I can include the letters that I still owe people. If I don't get around to the letters soon I will have to mail the cards without them though I think.
Mike put the tree up today so now we just need to decorate it. We will probably do that tomorrow night. Once it's all decorated I'll take some pictures so I can post them on here. :)
Had to work yesterday but we left work around 3 to go home and change and head to the city to see a Broadway show. We had tickets to see Cyrano de Bergerac (with Jennifer Garner, Kevin Kline and Daniel Sunjata). I love Jennifer Garner so it was great to see her live and the tickets we had were absolutely awesome. We got the tickets on Stubhub and got sooo lucky with our seats. They were in the first row right in the center and the best part is we didn't even pay all that much for them. The person that sold them only sold them for $5 more than face value. I really couldn't believe the seats. It felt like we could touch the actors - we were that close. :)
After the show we went to Osteria al doge, a super yummy Italian restaurant. The first time we went there was in 2000. It's the place where Mike and I officially got together. :) So of course the place holds lots of memories plus the food is incredibly delicious.
Mail update. No letters have gone out. :( Received letters from/still owe replies to: Jessica/DE, Celia/MA, Tizz/Denmark, Nicki/Australia, Deanna/PA, Charles/TN, Fiona/Scotland and Jetta/Finland.
Posted by Hanna at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
It's beginning to feel a little like ...
A short update. Somehow I seem to have trouble wih the whole Christmas spirit this year. I was into it over the weekend but then lost interest again when a new work week started. I really do want to get into it because I truly do love Christmas generally speaking.
Preperation wise I am doing fairly ok. The good news is I mailed all my international Christmas cards this past Monday (3rd). All my gifts that needed to be mailed went out yesterday (4th). Sometimes I think I should buy stocks in the US Postal Service. :) When we went to the post office yesterday to mail my gifts I had 8 packages going to 8 different countries. We ended up spending $63. And that doesn't include the postage I am spending on all my cards. :)
I still need to finish all my American cards. I started today and got 10 done that are being mailed tomorrow. 17 more to go.
I also got most of my Christmas decorations out and decorated the livingroom this afternoon. I was sad because one of my little snowman sculptures is broken (his nose fell off). One of my fairly new Yankee Candle jars is jipped on the edge too cause I bumped into it with something else. Plus a small part of one of my Dicken's Christmas Village houses broke off. Not a good day for things to stay intact. :(
We will probably decorate the tree this weekend. I can't believe that it's already December 5. Time is really flying this year. Decided what to do for New Year's the other day. We will be in Hollywood, Florida (near Miami) visiting with my parents who will be on vacation. For New Year's we will go to Giorgio's Grill. Looks really yummy and fun.
Short mail update. No letters have gone out. :( Received letters from/still owe replies to: Tizz/Denmark, Nicki/Australia, Deanna/PA, Charles/TN, Fiona/Scotland and Jetta/Finland
Posted by Hanna at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Lazy Sunday
And another week has gone by somehow and it's already December now. Wow, time is really flying a lot these days. I actually managed to get into the Christmas spirit over the weekend which is good. :) Friday night we went to a concert (Elliott Kerman & his Jumpin' Jazz Combo along with the Groovebarbers) in NYC at the Cutting Room and they played quite a few Christmas songs which helped me get into the spirit. :)
On Thursday I managed to wrap all the gifts that need to be shipped to people internationally so hopefully I can get them mailed early this week. I also wrote all my international Christmas cards over the weekend so those are being mailed out tomorrow. Still need to do the US ones but I'll probably tackle that on Wednesday (my day off this week).
Other than that not too much has happened. Today we had our first snow here in CT. It really wasn't that much, more of a dusting, but it added to my Christmas spirit. :) Now I need to get out all the decorations and actually make things look Christmas-y. I guess that will be the project for the upcoming week.
Mail update: I mailed a letter to Tiffany/OK last week Monday. Since then no other mail has gone out. Received letters from/still owe replies to: Deanna/PA, Charles/TN, Fiona/Scotland and Jetta/Finland.
Posted by Hanna at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack