Soon it will be Christmas Day!
Simply amazing....not one, but nearly two months have gone by since I last posted. Life has just been busy....very busy. During the first weekend of November my parents visited. We enjoyed eating wonderful food here in the city at Goose Island Brew Pub and fabulous pizza at My Pie. I also joined them in visiting family friends in the suburbs and introduce them to the wonder that is Ikea.
Jim and I also hosted our first big party...ever. We hosted a Guy Fawkes Party and invited approximately thirty people. Around fifteen to twenty of our friends joined us for some traditional British parkin, tea, and scones...not to mention the burning of the Guy Fawkes effige that Jim created at WalCamp. It was absolutely fabulous and we are very keen to make it an annual event.
In the busieness of the holiday season Jim and I have not had time to have dinner guests as often as we would like to, but our social lives are still quite active. I continue to be involved in Women's Network and even hosted our December meeting in our apartment. It was a fabulous time. I made chocolate and cheese fondues and everyone else brought food to dip in them. There were eight of us at the meeting and have already decided that we will have to do the fondue thing again. We are also planning to have the January meeting at our apartment, because its quite nice to get out of the church basement for our gatherings.
We spent Thanksgiving at the pastor's house as we did not have family coming and there really wasn't enough time to make a trip north worth while. Pastor Donovan made a wonderful meal with several courses and, as usual, we were there for the entire afternoon and well into the night. The day after Thanksgiving I decided to brave Black Friday shopping and ventured out at 4:30 a.m. to Best Buy, Kohls and Target...all before going to work at 9 a.m.! I waited an hour at Best Buy to purchase some DVDs, but did not find the experience nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Target was nearly empty that morning so I was able to get through completely stress-free and complete the majority of my Christmas shopping before going to work.
Work is going quite well. It is not mentally stimulating or challenging in the least, but for 15 hours a week it is quite managable. The one thing I am relatively excited about is learning to use Dreamweaver for updating our website. (I'm mostly excited to add it to my resume!) Right now is one of my busier times at work as I am getting ready for the winter quarter, which means contacting all of the teachers to see what they would like to offer for classes and workshops, getting dates and times, scheduling it all in, putting together flyers, updating the website with the new schedule and promoting new classes. I am in pretty good shape, though I feel like 15 hours a week is never quite enough to accomplish all that I would like to for Sweet Pea's. Oh well.
I just finished my Stats class last week. I was very excited to complete my final test. It has been a bit challenging, but I still love numbers. I am quite nervous about the notion of completing the graduate-level Stats course as my residency course this summer in one week....that seems a little intense. I have four more chapters left in Economics, which I plan to finish before Christmas. That will mark the end of my prerequisite work. I will start my graduate-level classes after the new year, beginning with Business Ethics. I am excited to see what graduate classes are like.
Last week I walked a mile to the Aveda Institute to get my haircut...such a wonderful experience. You can't beat $14 for a haircut that looks great...even if I had to wait three weeks to get an appointment! Jim got a crappy cut for the same price yesterday at Cost-cutters....should've made an appointment at the Aveda Institute! :) His haircut is not even close to even...and those are licensed technicians! The people at the Avede Institute are students, (though they are well supervised by their instructors), but I've never had an experience with them even remotely close to the many bad experiences Jim has had a cheap hair places.
Last weekend was quite busy for us. Friday night I had a long-awaited Girl's Night and kicked Jim out for the evening, sending him to spend time with friends at CUC, (the school formerly known as CURF!) Several of my friends from the church and Karen from Milwaukee came over to hang out, have some good conversation and some great food, (which Jim spent all day Friday preparing-he made caramel corn, gingerbread men, truffles, buckeyes, and jello jigglers.) It was so much fun to spend time with so many girls...I've missed that for years! I think the last time I did something even remotely close to that was my bachelorette party. Saturday Jim and I, along with one of the other members, were planning to take the youth of St. James Christmas shopping. However, no youth showed up, so Jim, Cassie and I went shopping anyway. It was great fun and we also enjoyed a yummy lunch at Maggianos before returning home. In the evening Jim and I went to a party at one of the teachers from St. James' apartment. It was an interesting experience as everyone else at the party, (for the majority of the time we were there), were still in college. You could really see what a difference there is between college kids and us!
I can't believe that Christmas is only a week away. The majority of the Huenink side of Jim's family is coming for the 10:30 a.m. service on Christmas Eve as Jim is preaching. They are coming over to our apartment for lunch afterwards. Luckily they are bringing food so we wont have to worry about much more than cleaning the place. Aside from that, the holidays look to be pretty uneventful, but such is life when you're nowhere near the rest of your family. I'm getting used to it...we haven't spent a Christmas with family since we got married and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon.
Jim and I also hosted our first big party...ever. We hosted a Guy Fawkes Party and invited approximately thirty people. Around fifteen to twenty of our friends joined us for some traditional British parkin, tea, and scones...not to mention the burning of the Guy Fawkes effige that Jim created at WalCamp. It was absolutely fabulous and we are very keen to make it an annual event.
In the busieness of the holiday season Jim and I have not had time to have dinner guests as often as we would like to, but our social lives are still quite active. I continue to be involved in Women's Network and even hosted our December meeting in our apartment. It was a fabulous time. I made chocolate and cheese fondues and everyone else brought food to dip in them. There were eight of us at the meeting and have already decided that we will have to do the fondue thing again. We are also planning to have the January meeting at our apartment, because its quite nice to get out of the church basement for our gatherings.
We spent Thanksgiving at the pastor's house as we did not have family coming and there really wasn't enough time to make a trip north worth while. Pastor Donovan made a wonderful meal with several courses and, as usual, we were there for the entire afternoon and well into the night. The day after Thanksgiving I decided to brave Black Friday shopping and ventured out at 4:30 a.m. to Best Buy, Kohls and Target...all before going to work at 9 a.m.! I waited an hour at Best Buy to purchase some DVDs, but did not find the experience nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Target was nearly empty that morning so I was able to get through completely stress-free and complete the majority of my Christmas shopping before going to work.
Work is going quite well. It is not mentally stimulating or challenging in the least, but for 15 hours a week it is quite managable. The one thing I am relatively excited about is learning to use Dreamweaver for updating our website. (I'm mostly excited to add it to my resume!) Right now is one of my busier times at work as I am getting ready for the winter quarter, which means contacting all of the teachers to see what they would like to offer for classes and workshops, getting dates and times, scheduling it all in, putting together flyers, updating the website with the new schedule and promoting new classes. I am in pretty good shape, though I feel like 15 hours a week is never quite enough to accomplish all that I would like to for Sweet Pea's. Oh well.
I just finished my Stats class last week. I was very excited to complete my final test. It has been a bit challenging, but I still love numbers. I am quite nervous about the notion of completing the graduate-level Stats course as my residency course this summer in one week....that seems a little intense. I have four more chapters left in Economics, which I plan to finish before Christmas. That will mark the end of my prerequisite work. I will start my graduate-level classes after the new year, beginning with Business Ethics. I am excited to see what graduate classes are like.
Last week I walked a mile to the Aveda Institute to get my haircut...such a wonderful experience. You can't beat $14 for a haircut that looks great...even if I had to wait three weeks to get an appointment! Jim got a crappy cut for the same price yesterday at Cost-cutters....should've made an appointment at the Aveda Institute! :) His haircut is not even close to even...and those are licensed technicians! The people at the Avede Institute are students, (though they are well supervised by their instructors), but I've never had an experience with them even remotely close to the many bad experiences Jim has had a cheap hair places.
Last weekend was quite busy for us. Friday night I had a long-awaited Girl's Night and kicked Jim out for the evening, sending him to spend time with friends at CUC, (the school formerly known as CURF!) Several of my friends from the church and Karen from Milwaukee came over to hang out, have some good conversation and some great food, (which Jim spent all day Friday preparing-he made caramel corn, gingerbread men, truffles, buckeyes, and jello jigglers.) It was so much fun to spend time with so many girls...I've missed that for years! I think the last time I did something even remotely close to that was my bachelorette party. Saturday Jim and I, along with one of the other members, were planning to take the youth of St. James Christmas shopping. However, no youth showed up, so Jim, Cassie and I went shopping anyway. It was great fun and we also enjoyed a yummy lunch at Maggianos before returning home. In the evening Jim and I went to a party at one of the teachers from St. James' apartment. It was an interesting experience as everyone else at the party, (for the majority of the time we were there), were still in college. You could really see what a difference there is between college kids and us!
I can't believe that Christmas is only a week away. The majority of the Huenink side of Jim's family is coming for the 10:30 a.m. service on Christmas Eve as Jim is preaching. They are coming over to our apartment for lunch afterwards. Luckily they are bringing food so we wont have to worry about much more than cleaning the place. Aside from that, the holidays look to be pretty uneventful, but such is life when you're nowhere near the rest of your family. I'm getting used to it...we haven't spent a Christmas with family since we got married and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon.