First, we hit up the Wilson Bash on Christmas Eve, amidst flooding water that turned to ice before we left the party. Christmas Day held more fun with the Wilsons, and then two pretty relaxing days by ourselves. Sunday brought the Gottschalk Family Christmas (much like the Griswold Family Christmas, I think). And when the Gottschalks plan a party, you know it's gonna be a real doosey. Evan brought over a duffel full of board and card games and some new ones for his Wii. Rock Band was a hit with the guys of the house and here are a few pics to prove it.
The following configuration is what Em & I deemed the greatest Rock Band: Kyle on vocals, Ev on guitar, and Franz on the drums. However, everybody tried out each instrument and had a fabulous time. Maddie could not stop staring at everyone while they performed. Eventually, she began singing along with the likes of Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer". It was awesome.
I do have (ahem) some video of great performances, should anyone be interested in short clips of the greatest band.
:o)
True to form, the nieces were also extremely entertaining. Precious and Precocious, both.
Maddie created innumerable works of art, some of which she cut out with precision using big people scissors. It was astounding and incredible. She's very much into creating cartoonish animals with large faces/noses, like the Littlest Pet Shop crew.
She also drew a detailed picture of disco dance party of my friends and I, only I wasn't dancing "because she didn't much feel like it" (according to the artist). This treasure is going up in my office as soon as I get back! The disco theme came from the ElfYourself videos floating around the Internet.
Little Katie is always entertaining with her antics. Very upset by a blister on her heal, it didn't really stop her from body slamming Evan or climbing around on furniture, telling the story of her new book Pinkalicious! or other crazy goings on. She's very cuddly at times, and still manages to be the most ornery little tyke I know.
It was a Polly Pocket Christmas for the girls, each receiving three different sets, and they had a BLAST setting it all up last night.
I was sad to leave last night, not really knowing when I'll see the Littles and Emily & Franz again. I usually take a trip out in the spring or summer, but am not sure it's possible this year. However, this Christmas was so special with both families able to celebrate with everyone. I feel like that situation may become increasingly rare as the years go by, so I'm thankful for what we got this First Christmas as marrieds. It was so much fun and yet relaxing at the same time.
Not that I'm gifted in this area, nor that it's a favorite pastime, however in the few opportunities I've had to invite people to my home in order to provide some relaxing fun and laughter, I have enjoyed it.
Yesterday afternoon Kyle & I hosted our first joint effort of hosting Game Night, redubbed Game Day since it didn't occur at night. Though several of our friends were unable to join us (Sara & Chris were greatly missed, but we're happy the fam got to meet him and realize how much they love him), those who did come brought their game and stories to share.
Leslie D. drove up and Dereck, Austin, and Voss stopped by from the neighborhood. Kyle was thrilled that the girls were outnumbered this time around, since most of our times with friends (at least around U-town) involve him being outnumbered by the female species. Twice this week I have found myself the great minority, in terms of gender, and my husband has had a lot of fun on both of those occasions (mostly because football and games were the focal points of the evenings).
Games played:
- Settlers of Catan (2 new converts)
- Blokus
- Mad Gab
Food eaten:
- chips and salsa
- Dereck's apple pie a la mode
- bacon, ham, and cheese casserole (from Alaina)
It was awesome. Now, I'm not a huge gamer, but it turns out if I'm mentally prepared for an afternoon or evening of gaming, I can totally do it. In fact, Kyle & I even knocked out a round of dominoes after everyone left.
Here's the deal, I don't like entertaining. I don't like being responsible for everyone having fun, but I do so love being with friends and laughing until there are tears or side aches all around. And that's what usually happens with my friends. How lucky am I?!
Yes, it's Friday, so perhaps this will be my only miracle this week, but it's still somewhat significant.
Though I'm not working, I have been super busy this week. I'm working on making my nieces something for Christmas, only it's turning out to be an intense project requiring HOURS in the campus technology center and lots of brain work (like figuring out measurements and sizing and how it's all going to lay out -- much like my quilt and the aprons I sewed last year).
In my focus on getting this stuff done by next Wednesday, I have become a little scattered in other areas of life.
Tuesday after I finished up at the technology center, I stuffed the USB/flash/thumb drive into my jeans pocket, grabbed my bag o' things (VHS tapes, blank DVDs, cassette tapes, blank CDs, pens, papers, and a book to read) and ran out the door so I could get home, changed and to the gym and back before Kyle got home.
Before starting food for dinner, I threw my some clothes in the washer and then went about my way running between the kitchen and computer room doing various things.
An hour later, after switching over my laundry, I found at the bottom of the washer, my USB drive. It'd been through an entire cycle -- my favorite little piece of technology.
Instantly panicking, I pulled the 2 GB memory card out of the card reader and set them on the table, wishing them to be dry and functional. I left them there until this morning.
Crossing my fingers and praying for a miracle, I just hooked them up to my computer and found that I could read it, the files are, indeed, intact, and somehow I just made it through a miracle involving lots of water, a washing machine, and laundry soap.
For an assignment that all 450+ freshmen students had to complete, one of the questions asked them to approach a librarian and ask for a random, unique fact about that person.
Here is the list from which I picked each time I was asked (which was a lot--I actually grew tired of hearing myself say these things):
- I'm claustrophobic
- I broke my finger in intramural football
- I spent a semester in Ireland
- I'm allergic to peanut butter, but it's one of my favorite foods
- I'm the newest married librarian in the building
- I'm legally blind without my contacts or glasses
- I'm the youngest in my family of four kids
- I want to live in Arizona
- I'm the youngest librarian in the building (by nearly 20 years)
- I love going to the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned (which I did this past Tuesday)
- I am a pyromaniac
- I love clocks and maps
- I love reading juvenile literature
- Sometimes I laugh uncontrollably (more now than ever, I'd venture to guess)
- I like to wear skirts (this is very new)
- Peppermint mochas are like Xmas in my mouth all year long...I love them
Feel free to add your own list of my eccentricities as comments on this post. I'd be interested in knowing what other people think is unique/strange about me.
It's begun.
The winter rainy, snowy, slushy, slippery-slidy mess of precipitation. The cold. The bone-chilling wind.
My bones hate winter. In nearly every joint, I feel the cold. I woke up yesterday and my big toe was swollen, red, and hurt in a way I have never experienced before. It reminded me of my Dad's arthritic toe, and I kept saying, "no. no. it can't be arthritis." Officially, I've never been diagnosed with arthritis, but I'm fairly certain it is the culprit for my painful joints, my swelling fingers in the winter.
Twice over the holiday, I found myself shaking my hand as if to make the pain go away, and asking, "Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?" Both times, I found out that, indeed, it was to snow. My skill as a human barometer has surely made my husband proud.
I'm blessed this year to have someone who will clear off my windshield when he goes to work at 6am, so that it's much easier for me to get to work on time. To have someone who can shovel the driveway when it gets really bad, someone who loves winter and snow. Someone who will pray for my poor toe, when I'm in too much pain to think of it. A little perspective, you know, can do wonders.
The day we arrived back at our resort from our trip inland, we did some crossword puzzles, but mostly let our tired, weary selves soak up the absence of thinking and bouncing along jarring roads.
When the dinner hour approached, we were ready for something other than the hotel menu. Between the two of us, we'd eaten everything we could afford on the dinner menu; it was no longer interesting or enticing. In his extensive research prior to arriving in Costa Rica, Kyle had heard great reviews of a restaurant that was only a few miles from our beachy home. Despite the fact we'd just spent a day and night in the car, it seemed worth the 30-minute trip on the painful roads to have some variety in our diet.
It was dark as we left our second-story room. Taking the first set of stairs down in the open-air hallways, we were excitedly chatting about the food we would discover at Restaurant Copal.
Special note: The rooms at our hotel were divided up by twos; each set of two rooms shared an external alcove and set of double doors (although each room had it's own outer door into the alcove). While we were one of maybe three groups of tourists staying at this resort, most of the alcoves had their lights on at night. Remember, we were on the very edge of the jungle, and our room was on the very end of the row of rooms. The "hall" from our room went one direction, and in the opposite direction, away from the other rooms, we faced total darkness. There were not parking lot lights or, in general, external lighting for the hotel. The lights were concentrated where the rooms, the hotel restaurant, and the lobby were. None were on when these various locations were not in use.
Thus, at the bottom of the stairs, we passed a dark alcove that led to two unused rooms. I was about to comment on how dark it was, when something jumped out of the alcove towards me, and I lunged Kyle's direction, away from it.
"What happened?" he questioned, and then we both looked in front of us.
Running in the direction of 1) our car, 2) the hotel restaurant, and 3) the only exit from our room's location, was a skunk. It's tail was raised in a perfect perpendicular line from the rest of its body. As it waddled quickly away, I gasped and started RUNNING in the opposite direction, toward the jungle at the end of the dark hallway.
"Was that a Skunk?" he called as we ran.
I find it ironic that in Costa Rica, in Latin America, next to the jungle, I would run into an animal that I could run into at home. Not a monkey (which we heard all the time, but never saw), not a lemur, not any kind of exotic animal that one might hope to see in such an environment. No, a skunk. This would be the only animal that I would encounter in my excursion to the jungle.
As we reached the end of the hall, we sniffed the air and realized that we hadn't escaped the thing we were running from. The smell permeated everything; it was a heavy, choking stench that clogged the nostrils and repulsed mouth-breathing. I wondered how we were going to get to dinner -- whether at Restaurant Copal or at our hotel. Everything that had food was in the direction of the skunk.
The skunk's little hiding place, and thus the primary point of stench, was near the only set of stairs that went up. We had no choice but to go through it, one way or another, to reach our car. We held our breath and ran through the smell and upstairs; we kept running, barely breathing (which is not an easy task), until we reached the furthest set of stairs from skunk-smell. We ran all the way to the car, where we jumped into the claustrophobic combo of oil and man-sweat.
"I think we smell." At that point, we began scent-inspecting our clothes, only to discover that one can still reek of skunk without a direct hit. It had begun the nighttime drenching rain, and we sat in our car, which was not turned on, shivering and stinking up an already stinking vehicle. Weighing our options, we decided to continue on in our smelliness to Restaurant Copal. Hoping they would admit two reeking people for a bit of food. Our money was still good, even if we were offensive.
Finding the restaurant was, um, difficult, at best. The roadside handmade signs indicating where it was abruptly ended while we were attempting to climb a road of matted, soaking 2-foot-tall grass. There was a steep grade up, most of the time, and I could barely make out a substantial drop to the right of the single lane. We passed a building that had no lights on. It appeared to be a home, a large one which (I would have guessed) was owned by a wealthy family. We passed a driveway to a large estate, and then the road went steeply down. I was quite sure our car, even in 4-wheel drive, could never make it back up the slippery grass-covered road.
"Please turn around. Please turn around." I started a mantra, hoping that in his concentration, Kyle might hear me and subconsciously think turning around was the best idea. Before we got too far down, he heard me, and agreed that it was a bad idea to continue following this path.
When we made it back to the home on the side of the road, we realized that this was most likely Restaurant Copal, and it appeared that they closed for the Rainy Season. Which, after traversing this path, made total sense. Getting to it was treacherous and life-endangering.
We gave up and drove back to the hotel, bringing our excursion to a sad end. We still stunk of skunk, we were starving and had to eat the same food we'd been having all week, and now it was really late, having spent at least an hour searching for the elusive Restaurant Copal.
As we took a seat in the hotel restaurant, one of our favorite waitresses approached.
"How do you say Skunk in Spanish?" I asked her (in Spanish--Como se dice "skunk" en espanol?)
She shook her head; she didn't know what skunk was.
"Blanco y negro animal?" I asked, measuring the size with my hands.
"Oh! Si! El sorro."
"Yes, well, we just got sprayed by one." That, I said in English. She looked at us, we nodded, and she sniffed. As she began laughing, she turned to the girl behind the counter and related to her in Spanish what had happened to us. They chuckled, and then told the guys in the kitchen, who began roaring with laughter.
"We're the stinky people." I said to Kyle, feeling very defeated.
All through dinner, we would catch wiffs of the rank, pungent odor of skunk. Surely we couldn't continue to smell that bad, since we weren't directly hit.
We learned, later, that employees of the hotel were trying to find the little guy with flashlights and the continued wafts during dinner were his answers to their attempts to corner him.
For the next few days, Kyle swore he kept smelling skunk every now and then in the room, despite the fact that we left our clothes outside to be drenched by the rain and dried by the sun.
Turns out, it was my favorite Sketchers sandals that were the offending culprits. They had a crack in the bottom that absorbed the rainy, skunky water and would not stop smelling.
In the end, I was forced to leave them in the room, knowing that I was not about to put them in my suitcase to contaminate everything I had with me, nor was I going to wear them for our 22-hours of travel -- smelling on a plane, in airports, and in our car. I would not be the smelly person again. I take great pains to avoid smelling, including taking two showers a day. Thus, my Sketchers and I parted ways on Sunday morning at 3am when Kyle and I headed off to the airport.
The skunk was, truly, the last straw for me. Had another misadventure come our way, I would have dissolved into a teary pile of nerves. But, Friday we did nothing in order to recover from two previous days of insanity. Saturday, we found a perfect beach to visit and the sun shone all day. We were actually sun-burned while swimming in the little bay. When we saw a couple of large fish splashing about near us, we questioned why they were so close to shore, we left their turf, deciding not to play any games with water creatures. Thus, we had a perfect last day in Costa Rica.
Sunday began at 3:15am, as we showered, packed, and took the 1.5 hour trek to the airport. We arrived home in Upland on Monday morning at 1:30am.
Kyle thought my honeymoon episodes were going to be bash-fests for a terrible experience. But, see, I have grown up enough to be able to share the positive with the negative. Scary, terrible things happened on this trip. But so did wonderful, indescribable things. And, as one of my friends said, at least I was with a man who loved me and was determined to take care of us and get us to safety. It's true. He was calm at all times and instrumental in figuring out how to deal with each of our misfortunes.
I was thrilled to be home, I cannot lie. But that's when the other side of being newly-weds began: the adjustments. An entirely new set of adventures, to be sure.
We've found that our new favorite coffee/creamer blend is this:
Pumpkin spice coffee
Peppermint mocha creamer
Also recommended hot beverages:
Blueberry tea
Blackberry tea
Caramel truffle coffee
Hot cider
I do have (ahem) some video of great performances, should anyone be interested in short clips of the greatest band.
Maddie created innumerable works of art, some of which she cut out with precision using big people scissors. It was astounding and incredible. She's very much into creating cartoonish animals with large faces/noses, like the Littlest Pet Shop crew.
Little Katie is always entertaining with her antics. Very upset by a blister on her heal, it didn't really stop her from body slamming Evan or climbing around on furniture, telling the story of her new book Pinkalicious! or other crazy goings on. She's very cuddly at times, and still manages to be the most ornery little tyke I know.