Holidays

Christmas has come and gone. Charles and I were able to travel to Atlanta the week before Christmas to see both our families. That was a lot of fun.

We were able to eat at lots of restaurants that we missed, go shopping at Atlantic station and Lenox mall, go see some movies, play many rounds of Scrabble and Yatzee, and generally enjoy the company of both of our families. Melinda held her big Christmas party this year, and got to see lots of Charles's family. Also, my grandma was visiting so we got to spend some time with her.

Also while in Atlanta we were able to adopt a kitten, which was surprisingly easy. So, we brought her the plane home with us-- she travelled just fine, and is now quickly adjusting to life with us in our little apartment. Charles and I are James Bond fans and named the cat after the evil overlord who had white fluffy cat. So now we have a white kitty named #1.

Charles and I had a quite Christmas together. We opened the presents we had gotten each other and spent the whole day playing Monopoly and Mario Party 8. Charles was a little bummed he got lots of clothes for Christmas and not many fun toys, so we got him a Play Station 3. The graphics are amazingly beautiful. I can't wait to get some high def movies to play on it, that should look pretty cool too.

Christmas is Coming!

I'm pretty excited this year for the holidays. I think Charles is too. It's cute, he can't wait for Christmas, so he's already made me open one of my presents. He got me a little building kit that we can both play with, it's fun.

We did a 'secret santa' gift exchange at work. There was a $20 minimum so that no one would get shortchanged with a cheep gift. So we were going to exchange presents at the party on Saturday, but we didn't want anyone at the party feel left out in case someone got there late his their gift, so the plan was to bring all the gifts to work the Friday before, and we would all open them at the party. Of course that didn't work. Michelle and I opened the branch on Friday and were the only ones there, and we got each other for secret santa, so of course we went ahead and opened our gifts. Then everyone else did throughout the day. Oh well.

I was hoping to be able to show off video from our drive here when visiting family next week, but alas, it was not meant to be. I had tried to import the video files from our new camcorder onto my iBook, and that proved quite the task. The camera uses USB but macs prefer firewire, and turns out our camcorder is the ONLY model without firewire. SO I order some software that's suppose to work with our camcorder and that ends up being a total bust. And then when I am able to get the camera and my computer to communicate, the camcorder uses some weird file type which takes forever to convert. And they take up loads of space. I have no free space on my hard disk now. There's always something *sigh*.

We both can't wait for next week. Flying out to the ATL on SUNDAY!

Trimming the Tree

So, the Santa Barbara branch decorated to the nines for the Holiday season, so we decided to take decoration to a new level at our branch. We all stayed late after work last Thursday for a tree trimming 'party'. We put ribbons and garlands everywhere and lights all over the 'mortgage center' (a sign which looks like a little house). And the tree-- we have the most pathetic artificial tree which is well over 10 years old and literally falling apart. Someone had already started stringing lights on the tree and soon after quit, and our manager, James had gone to the store to pick up more lights and other trimmings. So I undecorated the tree and resolved to put the lights on the tree the right way. Mom and Dad know how I put lights on a tree-- stringing lights around every individual branch. So, 9 strings of lights and a few hours later I had successfully stung 1050 lights on the tree. Needless to say, the tree gets the most compliments from customers.That tree is so beautiful! Just look at all those lights! James was delighted and called his buddies at the other branch and told them we had over a thousand lights on our tree (they only had 300, ha!).

The bank has been incredibly busy heading into the holiday season. No one gets a day off this week. On Saturday we had every teller line open and there was still an incredibly long line. On Monday, even the assistant manager will be manning the teller lines. I'm not looking forward to it. I'll need lots of coffee.

Charles and I have decorated our little place for the holidays. Well-- I decorated. He graciously cleaned up after me. We got a pre-lit tree (so I only went through the lighting ordeal once) and have a substantial number of decorations on it. And I have my little Christmas village and kissing snowmen gracing the table. Of course, we are especially looking forward to going to Atlanta the week before Christmas to see everyone. It will be an exciting trip!