snowy day!

" Baby, picture you and me. Hanging 'round the Christmas tree. Pretty lights and an angel up above, Christmas of love."

- The Grinch; Christmas of Love

Well, it's finally here! Our first snow, in New Jersey at least! Best part is, I have today off. :) It's so fun to cozy up with a cup of tea & Aladdin. Yes, Aladdin... great movie! It was on the Disney channel. Also, Mike's gift came today! 8:43am rolled around, and they walked right up. Now, after holding the secret in for two weeks, which is a REALLY long time for me, I have to stare (and NOT open.. or I'll get yelled at) this gift. I'll put some follow-up images after he opens it.

Anyway, this past weekend I finally started to get in the holiday spirit. I went home to see my mom and spent the weekend buying gifts, baking, putting up a Christmas tree and playing with babies! I mean - it really doesn't get much better than that. I got all my Christmas shopping done, except for Tonka. I can't believe that Christmas is only a week and a half away... no idea how that happened, or where this year went.

It's amazing how people really don't slow down. Ever. No matter what. That's one thing that gets to me about New Jersey. People don't even have time to put their carts back. It takes approximately one minute to take a cart back. No one really does that here. I think that's my next move. I want to move somewhere where people have time to put their shopping carts back. It's weird, yes... but it's the little things. It's always about the little things.

When I look back to where I was last year at this exact moment. I was graduating school. I was moving to New Jersey - a place where I knew NO ONE. Starting my career, or what I thought was my career. The financial markets weren't falling. I just bought a new car. I started to miss Happy Valley the moment I left. Now.. where I am.

I still miss Happy Valley more than anything. I have a dog. I have STUFF. Like.. actual house stuff. New kitchen appliances, a huge entertainment center, a freaking custom made dog litter box and custom bed, a WALK IN closet. I never thought I'd get one of those. My job has it's ups and downs - usually downs... but I've learned SO much. I found a boy (or he found me?) that I can honestly say I love more than life itself. I have a new niece that was born on Valentine's Day. My sister moved to Wisconsin (who moves to WISCONSIN?!). My Mom flew for the first time. I went to Bonnaroo! Laynie is talking. Megan is walking..... and I'm a grown up (ick).

Here are a few to hold you over. :)

Mike's House! This is what he spent all weekend doing.

Laynie does this.. "Hey Fishy, fishy!" to it! It's so cute.

Chloe and I. :o)

That's all for now. :)
<3,>

70 degrees in december?

"But for now, let me say - Without hope or agenda - Just because it's Christmas - And at Christmas you tell the truth - To me, you are perfect - And my wasted heart will love you"

- Love Actually

Top o' the morning to you! Well, here we go again. This is seriously the best invention for not doing work, if I do say so myself. I have successfully sat down, drank coffee, answered about 2 of the 100 e-mails that are waiting, ate my wonderful Weight Control Maple & Brown Sugar oatmeal (which is stellar, if you want to give it a whirl), and done about an ounce of work. Clearly, it's overrated.

I can't believe it's already Wednesday. I had off on Monday. Since J&J is such a wonderful compnay, they let you carry over vacation days from year to year - too bad it's only FIVE. We start with 7, and two floating holidays. Tack on the 7 days that I've racked up working on weekends, until 3am, etc. - you end up with a lot. So, my months of November and December were/are full of days off! Boy, do I love it. I'm taking after my father in the fact that in December, he doesn't work a full week. It's like saying.. "Hey, Jim. Merry Christmas... go play in the garage and go to Sears in the middle of the week." What man is going to say no to that? Granted, next week's day off all depends on when Mike's Christmas gift comes. I'm pretty much going to stalk the company that I will not mention until I find out what day they're shipping. We'll see if I hit the nail on the head by guessing next Wednesday.

Okay, so.. purpose of the blog. Be positive. Say positive things. It's the small things in life. I'm sure we can all agree on that. One small thing in life that can make or break your day that I'm sure you've never thought of - your travel mug. Yes, the wonderful thing that carts your coffee from your warm, cozy house to your... not-so-warm-and-cozy office. Yesteday, I had the pleasure of taking Mike's coffee mug. (Taking.. guilting him into it - all in all, same story.) It was GREAT! My coffee was hot until at least 10am. That's almost 2 1/2 hours of hot coffee. Today, on the other hand, I used the "other" cup. It's 8:30am. My coffee is cold. But, once again, looking at the bright side - it didn't spill anywhere!! (yet...)

This weekend, Michael and I treated ourselves to Ihop. We're both making goals to lose weight(Psycho around holidays, I know. But, at least we're doing it!), so Ihop was like our last breakfast hoorah. I had french toast. I think Mike got some crazy contraption of a pancake, too. Needless to say, they were AMAZING. After enjoying our amazing meal, we were driving out.. and encountered one of the funniest things we've seen in a long time. Can you figure it out?

Can you see it? Please say you can... THE DEERS ARE HUMPING!!!!!!!! HA! This must look awesome at night. I'm gunna try and get over there, and just hope that they're still stacked. Welp.. I suppose I should at least start to earn what they pay me. Here are a few pictures from this weekend. :) And be sure to visit your neighborhood Ihop. Maybe your deers got just as lucky!

This is the back of Mike's truck. Turned out kinda cool.

And this is Michael looking like an Italian mobster... welcome to my life. :)

That's all for now! Happy Hump Day! (Has a whole new meaning now, huh?)
<3,me

here's the 4-1-1

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe one of the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

-Shawshank Redemption

So I've decided to start up this little so-called "blog" trend that everyone seems to be getting into. I'm not so much doing it to jump on a band wagon, or get my intermost feelings out.. I'm pretty much just self-centered! Kidding..... (kind of?)

I just basically wanted a forum for myself to see how good I have it. So I can take a step back when things are exactly going my way... or maybe a certain job isn't going to well and look at what I do have going for me. So, ultimately, this will be a place for quotes : pictures : comments : and overall just happiness. Can't go wrong with that, can you?

I first thought about doing this when my ever-so-wonderful boyfriend, Michael Babcock, invested a great deal of money (one in which I will not reveal.. but you have google!) in an AMAZING vehicle for my creativity. Being a financial analyst, I don't get to necessarily paint pretty pictures and use that wonderful side of my brain too often. I've always been creative. My Mom and I loved doing puzzles, painting ceramics, doing story lines, reading (yes - people still do that these days.. and no, Susie - not always about "vampires). I'm almost to what he got me, but I also want to explain it was a Christmas present. Yes, I know it's only December 9th. Mike and I both have issues keeping secrets (especially when they're good!). He bought me.....

Now... if you know me.. you also probably know I live in the world of pictures. I can pretty much guarentee that if I'm not taking them, I'm looking at that... 80% of the day. No - I'm not kidding. Mike bought me a Nikon D80 - the absolute best Digital SLR camera. I can manually expose, crop, color.. you name it. This camera does it.

Not only has he given me an excuse to not work and write in a blog and show off all my wonderful new photos, he has now given himself another way to distract me so he can play his Call of Duty 4 game. =) Smart man, I tell you.

I will continue to write as often as I can - most likely a little more often now, than in two weeks as my life will end being it's the financial close for J&J. But - fear not - I will be back. I'll leave you with a few of my favorites of this past week.

The first picture I took. :)

That's all for now.

<3, me