Happy Happy Happy!

Today we celebrated my birthday, my brother's birthday, and my boyfriend's birthday by eating dinner at my parent's house with my Nanny and my brother's girlfriend. We ate Vera Cruz tomatoes and baked potato and applesauce, with carrot cake for dessert! So yummy.

So now I am 23! I still feel the same. And my little brother is 20! He is all grown up. I'm sorry, buddy, but I still see you as a little boy who needs bossing. I'll try to work on that. ^_~

My parents just bought a 3D TV and we watched a 3D movie on it with our funny 3D glasses. It was really cool! Now we are home and relaxing before bed.

I have had such a great day. Nick woke me up by making waffles with chocolate chips, and then making me study for my last final (that part wasn't so great). I took my final (I think I did well!) and then came back for a few hours that I just spent with Nick. Then I drove to Olive Garden to have a luncheon given by the Board of Trustees for the teachers at the school I work at. It was just lovely, and really thoughtful of them to do. The director of the school stood up and said really nice things about all of us, and handed us cards with a bonus in them! He said that all the children love me and that the parents and even the teachers stop in to tell him that they like the way I teach. That was really, really nice to hear and I appreciate them so much! I really love my job. Also amazing is the Christmas presents that the parents give the teachers! I have received two armfuls of presents! Starbucks cards, candles, a beautiful Christmas mug, cookies, chocolates, candies, a little purse, a leather paper holder, a beautiful bookmark, numerous lovely cards, and so much more. There are really wonderful people at this school. ^_^

Here's to a great year! It's off to a great start.

My Boyfriend's Foot Is On My Shoulder Like a Silent Stinky Angel

He really is a sad thing when he isn't feeling well, which is why I'm allowing it. I would like to note, however, that he is only about two days behind me in the same cold, and he's getting much more sympathy than I received. Poor thing. 

Oh, there's so much that's happened, and so much that has stayed the same. Let's see. Nick and I both are now 22, which is exciting but kind of a letdown after turning 21 and being allowed to drink. What are we allowed to do at 22 that we couldn't do before? Say we're a year older, I suppose. 

Presents! Presents happened, they were lovely. We had birthdays and then Christmas, and now I can't think of anything else that we either need or want. (Lies. There's always more want.) Our kitchen is not wonderfully full of all kinds of gadgets. Which is good for us, but bad for my waistline. 

We spent hours opening these presents. It was fabulous!

Santa wrote my cousin Adam a letter, complete with sparkly snowflakes and a Rudolph. Santa likes sparkles. Katie likes sparkles. ^_-

It was a good Christmas. We returned via the sardinemobile and were happy to be home . . . and then promptly fell sick with a cold, which returns me to my poor sick boyfriend and his feet. 

We both felt kind of icky and so stayed home for New Years Eve. 

(TANGENT: Have you seen that How I Met Your Mother episode where the group of friends goes out to a club and they explain the differences between singles and couples? About how singles move around and get drinks and talk, but couples are so exhausted by the very act of leaving the house that they find a seat and stay there? That's now Nick and I are. We are a couple of old fogies living in 22-year-old bodies.)

(TANGENTY TANGENT: Barney's quote from HIMYM "When I'm sick I just stop being sick and be awesome instead. True story.") (I love that guy.) 

ANYWAYS, SO, Nick and I stayed in and made spinach mushroom cheese ravioli's with our new kitchen aid and the new ravioli maker and they were DELICIOUS and then I made peach bellini's (frozen peaches, champagne, peach liquor, YUM) and then we watched Star Wars IV and smooched at midnight. 

Time for the requisite New Year's Resolution List! 

1) I will complete 500 miles this year! And do 30 minutes of exercise a day!

2) My mom and I will lose 2lbs a month (minimum) until we reach our goal weights! We will then maintain them. Yay!

3) Clean, clean, clean. Do not let apartment get explody again. 

4) Spend more time with boyfriend and less time on computer. 

5) Be happy and healthy and not let my stomach take over like it did for awhile there. 

PS: My boyfriend's resolution this year was to kiss me more. I think I'm gonna like 2011. ^_^

Happy New Year!!!

Furiously Playing Catch Up

Raise your glass to another disjointed blog entry! Let me tell you about my last few weeks. 

I completely finished all my classes at the community college I have attended for three years. I am transferring to a CSU for this spring semester. I feel very lucky to have been accepted because the school said they may not accept students because of budget cuts, and they did! I recently signed up for classes for my Child Development major. 

I am now the computer teacher for grades pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. I'm very lucky in that the previous computer teacher is very much mentoring me through the transition and has so much to teach me. I love my job and every class is different and fun! 

(Plus side of being a teacher is that you receive wonderful Christmas gifts! I have received Sees candy, socks, gloves, chocolate, homemade treats, money, Starbucks gift cards, and a bunch of holiday cards. I love how this school has such a small-town feel to it, and everyone is just so nice.)

I have been watching How I Met Your Mother (awesome TV series!) on Project Free TV, which is so cool! 

Katy Perry's new song Firework is awesome. Taylor Swift's new song Speak Now and the CD is awesome. Tonight I learned that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," act was repealed.  All good things!

I turned twenty-two. I should really write a post about that, but suffice to say it was fun, Nick took me out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and now he only has a few days before he catches me up. 

My baby brother turned 19. 'Nuff said. 

I'm typing this in bed while my boyfriend and our friends play Minecraft in our living room. They're having a LAN party. I tried to play and then decided to hide out in the kitchen, pumping out pizzas and clam linguini and cookies. Yummy!

Cheers!

Rockin' Our Way Into the New Year

The Symington Family welcomes its newest member: Rock Band 2!  RB2 was given as a Christmas gift to Quentin, and we are all having so much fun with it! As I type this my mom is singing "Psycho Killer" (She's a very good vocalist) and Dad is trying out guitar for the first time, doing awesome, and Troy is rocking out on hard on the drums. 

Earlier I sang a Paramore song on Rock Band, thinking it was on medium, and it was soooo hard, and I was confused because I had done this song really well before on medium. When we finished and Quentin was laughing I realized Quentin had sneakily put it on Expert! (I got 86%). I may have thrown a pillow or two at him. 

In any case, this is the most fun I've had with my family in a while! Yay!

PS I just sang Conventional Lover which is HILARIOUS, it keeps referencing Star Trek with Deep Space Nine and Pon Farr!

Cassiopeia Topaz Necklace

This beautiful necklace is my Christmas gift from Nick (from four months ago, I know, and yes I feel guilty for not blogging about it sooner)!

Nick told me a few weeks before Christmas that he wanted to buy me a necklace, but that I had to help him pick it out. We looked everywhere! He really liked the journey diamond necklaces, as did I, however the price range shot up ridiculously for good quality stones, and they had a bad habit of rolling over on their side. (To be entirely truthful too, I preferred something a little less common. Seems like everybody has one)! We both also did not like yellow gold, and preferred white gold or platinum. 

So we kept looking, and looking. I liked the sapphires that weren't too dark, he liked them dark. I liked emeralds (because they matched his eyes) but they didn't match mine, and Nick didn't love the emerald I did. 

Then I liked rubies, and he liked garnets. And it seemed like every store was having sales and the next store would have bigger, better, cheaper necklaces! And we started getting veeeery grumpy about looking for more because we were so freaking tired of looking. 

And I very definitely wanted a pendant. Something special! We were looking online and I saw that Kohl's had some very promising looking pendants, so we decided to go down and look. We ended up being torn between a three stone journey necklace and the cassiopeia topaz pendant, which is a clear topaz that has a treatment applied to the outside that makes it sparkle and be so colorful--it is blue and purple and green and clear and shiny and sparkly, and it has a tiny diamond chip right above the topaz and it is white gold and we both just fell right in love with it and so Nick bought it for me, and I stubbornly refused to wait until Christmas and Nick clasped the necklace for me once we were in the car and since that day it has rarely left my neck because I love it and he gave it to me. 

Thank you Nick! ^_^ 

Holiday Car Adventures

We drove to LA for the holidays. Something pretty exciting happened too! (Not getting presents, although that was awesome). 

So, we left in the Honda Odyssey van.

We arrived twelve hours later--SIX HOURS LONGER THAN IT SHOULD HAVE TAKEN--in a Mercury Marquis. 

Yep.

In that sedan we had squished our four family members, presents, bags, food, and two retrievers that spent the last four hours of the trip lying on our laps--since there was no room at all. 

Guess why! Guess! Guess!

When we were about halfway to LA, I was driving, and all of a sudden I heard a quiet thunk sound from the engine and then nothing happened when I was accelerating except the rpm's needle shot up to the danger zone. Instead of going 80 mph all of a sudden I was going 60mph. Since all the cars were going more than 80 I immediately clicked on my emergency lights and after we realized that all I was doing was revving and not accelerating, even in lower gears, I moved into the break down lane and we coasted for maybe 1/2 of a mile total before stopping. 

Dad looked in the engine and we were leaking fluid and our transmission was shot. AAA came forty-five minutes later, hooked us up to the tow truck, and towed us an hour and a half away to a auto mechanic that had a transmission shop. (We rode way high up in the truck! And the dogs were alone in the car--Kali was sitting in the front smiling at everything she saw, and we couldn't see Sage, she was probably hiding). 

So here's another cool part!

This happened Tuesday--and they cannot look at it until MONDAY! SIX WHOLE DAYS LATER! And they are quoting us at LEAST $2,500 for the transmission and $800 for a cylinder thingy. 

(So we might get a new car! Woooooot!)

So we were still hours away from LA with a broken van full of presents and dogs. We called at least four rental places and the ones that had big cars didn't take dogs and wait, sorry, we don't have any big cars, just a Hyundai Sonata, and we close soon anyway, bye! 

Finally we got ahold of a Mercury Marquis--a big sedan. We had to leave only a few things, but did have the dogs sleeping on us the whole rest of the way. 

(Note! Sage did NOT vomit on this trip at all! They were incredibly well behaved!) 

So we arrived and heard the story of our relative's day in Disneyland--complete with one person getting sick from the rides and while driving home throwing up all over the side of the car! 

And that is why our trip took us two times longer than normal. Yaaaay for holiday travel! 

Bleeeeeaaaagh. 

ThanksgivingSmushyChristmasTree

Since I have been remiss in my posting duties and also am lazy and tired, I hereby present the smushed version of my "Thanksgiving AKA Stuffing Yourself Until You Explode" post and the "Great Search for the Perfect Christmas Tree!"

Thanksgiving was great but very quiet, I kept thinking that we had the date wrong or something since none of my relatives were up! Missed you guys! It was just my family and Nick eating a huge amount of food. I ended up making a sweet potato casserole, and, like my boss suggested, putting in about 2 cooked banana per 4 sweet potato, and then whipping and covering with brown sugar and butter and sticking it in the oven for half an hour. Delicious!

All of us (except Dad, he was watching the game) then walked around the circle and fought the dogs every step of the way. (We will soon be buying one of those poky collars for Sage).

Then Nick and I drove off to his grandma's house for ANOTHER Thanksgiving feast! And I do mean feast--there was enough food for about 20 people and there were only 10 there, but it was soooo amazing! Nick and I and Clair played pool and first Nick won and then I won. Then we all exploded, the end.

This morning I woke up dark and early and drove to Nick's to go search for a Christmas tree for his family, and we all hiked for TWO HOURS up hills and down. I fell on my bottom once and slid halfway down a hill on my slippery boots, but Nick kept catching me! So sweet.

I took probably a gazillion photos with his dad's expensive camera, and hopefully will be able to post some of them soon!

Finally we found the perfect tree, after about 200 had already been examined and pronounced faulty for being too small or too short or too fat... it was hilarious! Nick's dad hefted it and we walked back down, and then bought delicious fudge and adorable Christmas ornaments! It was a lot of fun, but I am exhausted now. (May also be partly caused by the beginnings of a cold and a lack of wanting to do math and spanish homework).

So probably next weekend my family and Nick will go to a different tree farm and buy one for our house, even though we are going to LA for Christmas! Wish us luck and sturdy legs, for we shall need it.