The Holidays Are in Full Swing

It doesn't matter how old I am... I love the holidays! Despite the stress and hustle and bustle (all of which I try to eliminate as much as possible) there are great times to be had.

Last Tuesday, Bailey and I spent the evening at Carly & Parman's apartment making gingerbread cookies! We set out to make gingerbread people, but I had some issues locating our gingerbread person cookie cutter, so we ended up settling for Christmas trees. They turned out great! We enjoyed some pizza while the dough was chilling, then had a good time cutting, baking and decorating with frosting and sprinkles. I took the cookies to work the next day to share with my department and they got rave reviews! I'm not the world's greatest baker, so I'll credit Carly & Parman with the success. Bailey loved the cookies, too, but that's not surprising. I shared a few little bits with him, which is how I got him to sit so attentively for this picture:

On Thursday, Gearry and I set out to start and finish all of our holiday shopping. Yeah, yeah, I know, kinda last minute. But it was a success, mostly, as we didn't have all that much to purchase this year. We have a couple more things to pick up later this week. After shopping we went out to dinner, capping off a pretty fun date night.

On Friday, Gearry and I attended my office Christmas party at the new-ish Hilton in downtown Bloomington. I love the people in my department... most of them are around my age, so we make work as fun as possible. We talked about the party all day at work, like it was prom or something. "What are you wearing?" "How are you doing your hair?" "What time are you guys going to get there?" Fortunately, it didn't disappoint. It's hard to fail with the 3 D's... dinner, dancing, and lots of drinks! Afterwards a few of us headed over to Nick's, one of our favorite bars, for a nightcap and conversation, and I ran into some rowing friends. Just a great night.

This week should be pretty uneventful, until the weekend. Hillary's bachelorette party that I've been planning for a couple months now is this Saturday, Dec. 22nd. I have to volunteer on Saturday morning, but as soon as I can I'll be on the road to Ohio. It's so hard to plan something from this much of a distance, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything turns out! I'm not sure if Hillary reads this blog or not, so I won't share any details, just in case. But I'll provide a full update upon my return!