Wow, this is a super late post...

Procrastination. It won’t surprise me if that word is found at least once in most of our blogs. We are really good at it.

Lots has been happening, hence why lots has not been posted. The holiday season is busy busy busy. Alas, with the beginnings of a new year, life is slowing down (for the moment… ask me again next week), and I’ll take a few moments now to bring ya up to speed on everything that has been happening. I’ll try to condense the list and put it all in chronological order, but I make no promises unless I can keep them…

1. The Muppets Movie is great. Especially when you get in for free; at least almost, because we brought in canned food. We got two free tickets for a future show, so I see a date night in our near future ;)

2. We took our annual trip to the Our Lady of the Snows Shrine to view the Christmas lights with Mark’s mom and brother. A friend came with us this year :) Afterwards, we enjoyed a yummy meal at Cracker Barrel. It really is a fantastic restaurant; I’ve never had a bad experience at any of the many I’ve dined at. Mark and I brought home two bottles of Stewart’s Diet Root Beer, which we fervently enjoyed later the next day. Mmmm, pop!

3. In mid-December I got an email from Mark asking me to please come home after work instead of going to the family compound as I had already scheduled. He had a surprise for me. :) So, home I went. We got all dressy and he took me to The Touhill for a Christmas concert. We spent the night listening to both the choir and the orchestra… just beautiful! A definite way to get into the Christmas spirit.

4. We went to our first ever Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. Had a good time, and loved seeing my bestie and meeting her new sweetie. At the party, we played the game headbands. Mark was a mustache… which we laughed over because I hate facial hair… and I, of course, was an angel… which wasn’t that funny because I am one… ;)

5. We decided to send out Christmas cards this year. My mom drove out to our house, and the five of us (my aunt and cousin came along) spent a little while taking pictures at Souix Passage Park. Afterwards, we got pizza from Canollis and visited. Mark read the Dinasour Numbers book about a million times, per Ellie’s request.

6. Mark and I hosted our first ever Butler-Stewart-Fetters family Christmas party at our house. It went rather perfectly and was a fantastic reason to clean our house! Nana, Mom, and Daddy saved the day by helping me immensely in the kitchen and all family seemed to enjoy talking and laughing and getting to know each other a little more. Mark noted that he was especially appreciative of me not freaking out on him over his mistake in thinking we had a punch bowl – we ended up having to use the giant orange “Happy Halloween” bowl we use to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters. LOL!

7. I took two days off of work prior to my longer vacation over the holiday week, and we went house hunting… for another rental. Note to anyone selling your house – You should not smoke. If I pull up to your house, and I see through your window that you have a lit cigarette in your mouth, I will be viewing your home merely to be polite. Your chances of us buying it have already been lost. As soon as we walk out, I will turn to Mark and simply say “not happening”. I will not spend another four months painting and repainting over the smoke scum that you have allowed to pollute your house. That is all.

8. Though for a few days there it looked like Christmas was a stress bomb just waiting to go off… our holiday actually turned out really pleasant and stress-free. Christmas Eve Mass was pretty great for a few reasons:

a) We got there super early and were able to sit close to the altar – which I always prefer.

b) The altar boy had a difficult time with the candles. First he lit them, then he defused them out, then he couldn’t get the middle candle out so he tried to blow it. He was too short so the candle flickered on. Eventually, a taller altar boy appeared and blew out the candle. Then, when the priest walked by and discovered that the candles were not lit, he relit the candles that the altar boys had worked so hard to defuse. Everyone was laughing. It was freaking funny.

c) By the end of the Mass, the priest was falling asleep in his chair. His head kept bobbing up and down until finally he awoke and realized he still had to close the Mass. Mark and I couldn’t help entertaining ourselves over it.

d) They announced we were going to sing my favorite Christmas song. SCORE! Then they announced we were going to sing it in Latin. DANG NABBIT! And then we sung it again in English. SCORE!

e) I looked good in my new dress. lol

Christmas day was spent with our entire family at three different locations that really were not located that close to each other. (I thought this was going to be the stress bomb exploded – you try making two different families, made up of several smaller families, happy all at once while trying to make sure YOU have a good Christmas at the same time… it can be a real AHHHHHH kind of experience! One I am still not so quite used to and fear I will eventually become an expert in.) It was busy, but all of it was fun, and none of it was chaotic. I didn’t feel one bit of anxiety all day. We simply enjoyed everyone and everywhere we had to go. Oh, and Mark and I got each other some pretty awesome stuff for Christmas: among other things, his big gift was tickets to a Blues-Blackhawks hockey game, and my big gift was tickets to the Casting Crowns concert. We are always thinking alike ;)

9. Since we’ve started dating, Mark has been threatening (in a kind of cute, teasing way) to grow a beard or a goatee (yuck!) and after Christmas he decided not to shave. He kept calling 2012 “The Year of the Beard”. I was not liking it. The five o’clock shadow I don’t mind too much. In fact, in a rugged way I sometimes like it on him… but a full blown beard? No thanks! The Year of the Beard fortunately ended around 2 a.m. the morning of New Year’s Day, when Mark finally shaved before we went to bed. So The Year of the Beard only last two hours. A great start to a new year!

9. Mark got a runny nose.

10. Mark also go a flu shot. I did not. So, don’t kiss your boyfriend when he has a runny nose. You’ll end up with more than a runny nose. I was sicker than a dog with the flu for seven days.

That pretty much concludes this post. Mark and I spent the last several days of 2011 and the first few days of 2012 at home, for the most part, soaking up some quality time – watching movies and football, eating turkey chili and lemon chicken pot pies, sleeping in and taking naps. It was rather wonderful.