New Year, New Blog-Part I

Don’t worry. I know you’re panicking about the title of this blog and you may think I’m going to make big changes and take away the wonderful musings that you became so addicted to reading during 2009. All it means is this is my first new blog post of 2010. Now that we’ve averted that crisis, I have many new updates and very little space so I’ll get right to it.

First things first, here’s a little year-end wrap up about the conclusion of 2009. William and I spent our first Christmas as non-singles in Amarillo with my family. It snowed all day on the 23rd as we were driving into town so we arrived in Amarillo to a white Christmas. It continued to snow throughout the night and we had an even more beautiful and white Christmas Eve morning

After trying out several different highly recommended Dallas hair stylists (**FYI, I have not gone off on a completely unrelated tangent…just keep reading and it will all make sense**) I realized that there is no one in the metroplex area who I trust to highlight my hair anymore, at least not anyone I can afford. I was tired of paying for “full highlights” and coming home to find a few randomly placed yellow stripes in the under layers of my hair and I was also tired of paying twice as much as it costs me at home for a job that is half (and that’s generous) as good. SO, Christmas Eve morning, William and I jumped in the 4-wheel drive 4-runner and braved the ice to take me to get my haircut at Bob’s. Bob has been doing my mom’s hair for 30+ years and mine most of my life, when I wasn’t being bratty and demanding that I couldn’t get my haircut by mom’s stylist because I was afraid I would inevitably end up with “mom hair.” I walked in, sat down and told him I wanted to color my hair, and to do his best to match my roots. He warned me that it would be drastic, I told him to do it. It marked the first day of my life spent as a non-blonde.

That evening, we all piled in the car and headed to Plainview, the town where I grew up and my mom is still the church organist and handbell director, for Christmas Eve services. We all slept most of the way but I woke up about 20 miles from Plainview, where the icy roads were particularly perilous, and counted 16 cars in the ditch in the remaining miles to the edge of town. The ride home was a little slow as well, as the roads were getting worse as the temperatures dropped.

Christmas day with the family was wonderful! We woke up, had breakfast, and took our time opening up presents and sorting through stocking. The family was much too generous and we all walked away with a few more fun un-necessities. William got me an engraved iPod shuffle for our first Christmas (and we also got each other a new TV for our bedroom as our big first Christmas gift to ourselves!)

Due to the eventfulness of the Holiday season this year, I’ve decided to cut the length of my post and make this into a 2 part blog. Check back soon for the rest of the story of Christmas and all the excitement of our New Year (including dinner parties for 12, lawnmower fires, and possibly a pic of the new brown do if I can find my camera charger).