365?

What do you think - should I try to do the 365 challenge again?  I didn't do so great last year and only made it to around July before I totally gave up.  But it was a lot of fun.  But also really self-centered. 

Also, have I mentioned that zombie movies really freak me out?  Because they do.  But I still watch them anyway.

And finally, I love it when airports have free wireless internet.

This post brought to you courtesy of San Jose International Airport and a 1 hour flight delay on Southwest.

Traditions ... TRADITIONS!

I love the song from Fiddler on the Roof sung by Tevia about traditions.  That is what I was thinking when I wrote the title of this blog post.  So, it is 5:30 in the morning and I am awake again.  Because I am a freak like that.  So why not blog, right?  Especially since I found something really great at Pottery Barn Kids that I wanted to tell you about.  It is called "Your Birthday Book".

Image from barnesandnoble.com but available for cheaper on Amazon.

When I was growing up, each of the kids in my family had a "School Book" that was given to us by my aunts.  Once a year, we would update our books with the school photo from that year, a record of our height and weight, and information like the name of our teacher, our favorite subjects, the names of our friends, where we went on field trips, what we wanted to be when we grew up, etc.  It was such a great tradition and I love having the book now.  I was just looking through it the other day and bragging to Paul about how my 1st through 3rd grade report cards say things like "Amy excels at logical thinking and reasoning."  That was in Nebraska where we didn't just get letter grades, but our teachers actually made comments about our performance.  Once I moved to California in 4th grade, the teachers just awarded A's and moved on.

Anyway, the Birthday Book is so, so awesome because it is meant to be updated every year on or around the child's birthday.  It asks things like who came to the birthday party, what were some of the child's favorite gifts, what does the child want to be when he or she grows up, etc.  But it has other fun pages with "exclusive interviews" that change questions over the years but are more journal focused and include thought provoking little gems like asking a 5 year old about what was the last thing that made him/her sad or asking a 7 year old what makes him/her really, really happy.  When the child turns 10 you are supposed to ask them what the top five things are that they think about all the time.  There are also funny questions like asking a 6 year old how much the family car costs, who is the tallest person they know, and how tall do they think that person is.  I asked my niece Elizabeth these questions last night and she told me after some thinking that her mom is the tallest person she knows, that she is either 10 or 89 tall after Paul prompted her that her mom would be so many feet and inches tall, and she guessed that their family car cost $100 million dollars (but she might have just been being silly by that point).  I will stop going on about all the great things in this book, but you get the picture, I'm sure. 

Another reason I really love this book is because in our adoption education, I have learned that no matter what, at some point in the adopted child's life they will experience a sense of loss - a sense of "my life would have been different if my birthmom had not placed me for adoption."  And they will feel a loss of history - of family and past, etc.  And although that cannot be replaced for the adopted child, I want to make sure that our children have a history and I think that books recording a childhood that they may only have vague memories of might be a way of developing that sense of self.  The Birthday Book does a great job of that.  There is also a "The Grandparent Book" that I found in BYU bookstore by the same author and publisher which has wonderful questions for grandparents to help get their history down for your children.

And now, in the spirit of traditions and history and Christmas - since it IS Christmas Eve after all - here are some of my favorite holiday traditions that may be on the unusual side:

• Sleeping "in the crack" with my sisters.  This doesn't happen anymore, but every Christmas Eve my sisters and I would pile into my bed (which had a trundle bed that made it king size) and chatter about how excited we were for Christmas morning.  I loved this because I was the big sister and I knew what was going on but could still get carried away with the magic of their belief.  We continued this tradition until the year I got married to Paul.  Jennie and I always made Jessica sleep in the crack between the trundle beds, which was the most uncomfortable spot.  She was the littlest and complained about having to sleep in the crack every year, but secretly I think she loved it.  I'm pretty sure we took turns sleeping in the crack though because I have distinct memories of how annoying it was to be stuck in the middle. 

• Sneaking out to see what Santa brought.  I have always been a terrible sleeper on Christmas Eve.  Even now I still wake up all night long wondering if it is morning yet.  My parents always left the Christmas tree lights on all night on Christmas Eve and I would invariably sneak out of bed around 3 in the morning to see the presents under the tree and the toys that Santa had left.  Santa always wrapped some things and left others unwrapped and I loved having the preview of Christmas morning all to myself.  It was a secret, magical Christmas experience that I shared with no one else.  My sisters always made me promise that I would wake them up so that they could sneak downstairs with me, and sometimes I would, but only after I had made a trip by myself.  Some years I would boss them and tell them that they were not allowed to sneak down but that I would generously go fetch them a glass of water.  One year when I was maybe 12 my parents absolutely forbade me to sneak down in the middle of the night and told me that if I did, there would be no presents for anyone.  At 3 a.m. when I made my trip, there were no new presents from Santa.  I could not believe it.  I went back at 4 - nothing.  At 5 I started getting really worried.  Finally, at 6 when I knew that my brothers and sisters wouldn't sleep in much longer, I went into my parents room and told them with serious concern that there were no presents downstairs.  They asked me groggily how I knew that and I admitted that I had peeked but that my sin shouldn't affect my siblings receiving of presents.  I was pretty upset by that point.  My parents made me go back to my room where my sisters were and when they finally let us go downstairs at probably 7, there were presents for everyone, even me.  It was such a relief.

• My dad's Christmas Eve shopping.  It is not that my parents ever put off shopping for Christmas.  In fact, my mom was always really good about shopping early and we still love shopping together and finding sales or special surprises for everyone.  Incidentally, this is why I want girls - even now I try on things for my sisters and we make adjustments for sizes and they do the same for me.  But almost invariably on Christmas Eve my dad would come into the kitchen where my mom and sisters and I were usually baking something and say that he didn't think there were enough presents.  This was always after days of him saying that there were already too many presents under the tree and that we were all spoiled.  So while the girls finished up the cookies and watched a Christmas movie, my mom and dad would hit the stores for last minute surprises.  It isn't so much the extra presents that I love about this tradition (although that is an awesome bonus) as the feeling of being at home with my sisters while knowing that our parents were out together planning special things for us.  I'm willing to wager that this is one of their favorite traditions too whether they admit it or not.

• The yearly game of present roulette.  There were five kids in my family and it seems like each of us always wanted to be the one who had the last present to open.  This is not the same thing as having the most presents, it is just that there was something magic about the very last present.  We were forever hiding our own presents behind chair legs or underneath discarded paper in the hopes of fooling each other.  Paul has taken up this tradition and is amazingly good at the what-are-you-talking-about-all-my-presents-have-been-opened deception necessary to successfully pull off a win. 

• The post-unwrapping fashion show.  After eating a good breakfast (which was a tradition itself) and cleaning up the living room, we always had a fashion show for my parents (and aunts and grandparents if they were in town) where we tried on the clothes, shoes and jewelry that we had received.  There was much oohing and aahing and frequent use of the word "cute."  I tried to get my niece Emma to say "cute" the other day so she would be ready for Christmas, but she is only one and pretty much only knows "dog."  Next year though.

There are other traditions too of course.  Opening pajamas on Christmas Eve, reading the Nativity story and/or watching "White Christmas," going through stockings first before touching any other presents are other things that we do each year for example.  But these non-tradition organic traditions that just sort of evolved are really my very favorites.  Do you have any of these less-typical types of traditions in your family?

Christmas vacation, so far

It is 5:30 a.m. and I am wide awake in the guest bedroom at my brother- and sister-in-law's house.  I actually woke up around 4:45 and haven't been able to fall back asleep, so I figured I might as well be productive with my time and blog.  Hopefully my hammer-typing doesn't wake up Paul who will think I am crazy for not being able to sleep-in on vacation (which is always the case for me - it is like my mind doesn't want to waste a second of my time-off by sleeping).  So here is a list of some of the fun things we have been up to in the past few days:

• Gave away our first pass-along card to a stranger at the San Jose airport at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday.  The San Jose mission president and his wife were in line behind us at the Southwest counter and we had a bonded over a shared love of Costa Rica and being law school grads (the mission president was a '78 J. Reuben Clark law grad).  I finally just reached into my purse and pulled out a card to give to them.  Paul told me later that he had just been about to pull a card from his wallet but I beat him to it.
• Held/cuddled/kissed/played with/adored my niece Emma.  She just turned one on the 8th and she is the most hilarious and cute and fun little girl ever.  But I might be a tad biased.  She has this great, deep laugh that makes her sound like an old French man - you know, the "ohn-hohn-hohn" kind of a laugh - and I love it so much.  I was worried that it would take her a while to warm up to me because my mom had warned me that Emma is somewhat stand-offish around anyone but her mom, dad, and grandma.  But within the first hour or so of being around her she was not only letting me hold her, but she would reach for me (as long as her mom wasn't too close by).  Emma is stingy with her kisses, but I have been able to coax her into planting half a dozen of them on my cheeks and she even condescended to give Paul a smooch on his cheek too, which amazed us all.  It has been so wonderful to see what a great mom my sister is and to watch my mom interact with her granddaughter.  Emma and my mom both obviously adore each other and I think that my mom is better at getting Emma to laugh or smile than anyone else.
• Celebrated Paul's Grandma's 83rd(?) birthday with Paul's family and met our two new nephews.  Robert is 6 months old now and seems like he is just about to sit up.  He has big brown eyes.  Colton is just 2 months old and everything about him seems to wobble.  His head wobbles, his legs wobble, he wobbles his fists, etc.  Seriously, it is like baby overload around here with all these tiny nieces and nephews.
• Surprised some of our favorite people from law school by showing up on their doorstep on Saturday night just so we could say Hi and bask in the adorableness of their daughter, who is quite possibly the most brilliant child in the world.  I have never met an 18-and-some-month-old kid who can say things like "water chestnut" or "speakers make music" or "stinkyface". 
• Went to church at my parents' ward where we gave out more adoption pass-along cards.  Last year my parents' bishop knew of a birthmom and also knew a family in the ward who was hoping to adopt.  He told the birthmom about the couple's blog and helped them connect, so the whole ward has seen the miracle of adoption first-hand.  The bishop even told me that he knows another girl who is planning to place her baby for adoption, although he is pretty sure that she has already chosen a family.  But still, it gives me hope to realize that bishops are often aware of young women who have unplanned pregnancies and are able to talk to them about couples like Paul and me and our hopes to adopt. 
• Had a huge dinner with my extended family - something that my mom does every year where we make a special Christmas meal (chicken cordon bleu) and use her festive plate settings.
• Worked out at the gym with my mom.  She asked her personal trainer to put me through the wringer and I am paying for it now with sore stomach, shoulder, back, arm, and leg muscles.  We finished our workout and left just before they were going to start filming a segment for the next season of "The Biggest Loser".  Apparently, one of the contestants is from the area and there will be an episode where the contestants are sent home for the holidays while trying to continue to exercise and lose weight, and the contestant uses the same gym as my mom so they have been filming there this past week.  I thought about waiting around just to see what filming was like, but we had more important things to do, like play with Emma.
• Went shopping.  Our Christmas shopping is almost complete.  I love giving presents.  It is one of my favorite things about this holiday. 
• Ate at a bunch of our favorite places - Bombay House, Cafe Rio,  and Noodles.  I will pay for this after Christmas when I am dying on the treadmill, but it seems worth it right now. 

It has been so nice to have this break from work.  I have had to respond to a couple of emails from another associate on my blackberry, but nothing too serious has come up.  The one major downside of our holiday so far is that the inversion in Utah is terrible and it is making my throat hurt like the dickens.  But we are looking forward to more fun times and good food, and especially to Christmas day and a phone call with my sister in Uruguay. 

Oh, and we will be taking photos and trying to post some soon.  I know that there has been a dearth of images on this blog of late and I promise that I am planning to remedy that.

Merry Christmas!

Notice anything different?

Check out the button (that Paul made - amazing, huh?) on the left hand side of the blog.  We are still working on our adoption blog, but the basic content is in place now.  You might want to check it out.  And add it to your blog feeder, follow it, take a button to add to your blog, etc.  Because you are cool like that.

Can you please explain...

Why people in California put up those icicle Christmas lights that don't actually look like icicles?  This is causing me serious consternation because our neighbors on both sides AND across the street all have those icicle lights.  I really just don't understand it.  First, because they don't actually look very much like icicles.  Second, because it does not snow here.  Not that I have anything against icicle lights in general - just the idea of them in a warm climate.

Also, the neighbors to the right of our house have a Santa on a Harley.  The neighbors to the left have an illuminated flamingo and palm tree.  With icicle lights.  Again, the whole thing seems a little strange.  But maybe that's just me.

Pins & Needles. Also, Zombie Giveaways.

About a month ago I got a notice in the mail that I was being summoned for jury duty. I was both excited and dismayed at the same time. Truth be told, I thought it would be AWESOME to serve on a jury until I was actually involved in a trial this year and realized that it would actually be really boring unless you got, and I say this tongue-in-cheek, lucky enough to be selected for a case involving a "juicy" crime, which I will not list because these would probably horrify most people. But I will say that Criminal Law was one of my favorite classes in law school because I have an absolutely morbid fascination with terrible, terrible things and holding people accountable for those terrible things. Most of America probably feels the same way, otherwise Law & Order SVU and Criminal Minds wouldn't be such popular television shows.

Anyway, turns out you don't just show up for jury duty in Santa Clara County. Instead you get on a website at a pre-assigned time to check to see if your assigned number is being called to come into court the next day. Since I was on call for the entire week, I had to log on at 5:00 p.m. everyday wondering whether I would be able to make a scheduled conference call or meeting with a partner the next day. I didn't like it. I like to be able to plan things - to calendar my life. Finally today at noon the court website was updated to let us know that our availability was appreciated and we had a one-year pass before we would be thrown back in the pool of potential juror candidates.  Yippee-skippy.

On a totally unrelated topic, I have something to rant about: I'm all about giveaways on blogs - mostly because free stuff is awesome - BUT I am super annoyed with the way the give-away'ers permit "additional entries" as follows:

Comment on this post

Follow this blog

Subscribe to this blog

Like this blog on FB

Post about this blog in your FB status

Tattoo this blog logo on your arm

Follow me on Twitter

Tweet about this blog

Post a link to this blog on your blog

Give me your firstborn child

...and so on.

Is it just me or does this behavior creep anybody else out? Especially where these are what I am going to refer very casually to as "Mormon blogs," I get the feeling that this is like a guiltless lottery. Usually I just leave a comment but don't do the other stuff. And I wonder why I don't win.

Blissfest

Back the train up - is it seriously December already?  I don't even know how that happened.  I only posted, like, twice in November!  Is it just me or does it seem like people have been slowing down in posting on their blogs?  There has been very little movement on my sidebar lately with blogs being updated and it is very concerning to me.  Because I don't read CNN or MSN very frequently ya' know.  I've got to get news about somebody and something somewhere and somehow after all.

Anyway, since posting a list of things I am thankful for seems a tad tardy at the present, I present you with a Bliss List (i.e., the things causing me to bliss out lately):

• Seeing our awesome new stockings hanging on the fireplace mantel next to the Christmas tree.  We've never had a fireplace or a mantel to hang stockings from and we've never really had stockings.  I attempted to make stockings for us when we first got married and I mistakenly thought I was all domestic and crafty.  (I'm  really not domestic and crafty though I ashamedly try to attempt to be every now and then.  All you bloggers out there who diss on blogging about crafts and such have given me a sort of complex where I feel like it is embarrassing to even think about colorful ribbons and glue guns and other implements of craftiness.  Also, I feel guilty reading craft blogs, though I secretly enjoy them.  Seriously, if I am on a craft blog and Paul walks into the room, I minimize the screen lickety-split.  It is like porn, only I probably shouldn't joke about that.)  Our original stockings turned out awful and too small to hold much more than a toothbrush and chocolate-marshmallow Santa - certainly they couldn't hold the traditional orange in the toe.  So this year when I found the exact type of stocking I have been searching for for the past six years, I broke down and bought them (five of them to be exact - who knows, maybe one day we will actually have enough children to justify the purchase and I wanted matching stockings).

from Pottery Barn Kids
• Wearing my new running shoes while bouncing along to the sounds of "Empire State of Mind" by the cast of Glee!.  There is nothing like a new pair of running shoes to make me feel like I can go and go and go on the treadmill.  Seeing as how it is pitch black when I get home from work, I have been forcing myself to go to the gym to get a run in a couple nights a week.  My goal is to be more consistent. 
• Those cinnamony pinecone things that you can pick up this time of year in the grocery store, craft store, hardware store - basically anywhere.  They smell SO GOOD.  Especially when mingled with the scent of pine Christmas trees.  To all ya'll who have fake Christmas trees, I understand the convenience and ease but I have a frown-smile for you.
• The hilarious "Hide your kids, hide your wife" video which shouldn't be hilarious but is nevertheless hilarious.  You've probably already seen it but we are a bit behind the times.  It reminds me SO much of my mission in New Jersey.  Paul and I watch this like 5 times a day pretty much.
• Having a computer that holds a charge, where the keys don't stick and the touchpad mouse doesn't malfunction, and where the screen looks bright and clear rather than like a blurry piece of newspaper because the graphics are so dull.  Paul picked out a new Dell for me for Christmas and I am happily blogging away on it right now.  My old computer got me through every final exam in law school, hours of copious note-taking and internet surfing, and the California bar exam without ever crashing in the middle of a test once.  I feel a little guilty leaving it behind, but this new computer is a serious upgrade from about 50 gigs of memory to 500 gigs of memory.  I don't really know what that means and it might be RAM instead of gigs, but basically the new computer is better.  There.

Well, there is more to the blissfest, but I started writing this when I really should have been applying makeup and eating breakfast before work, so now I need to go slap on mascara and head out the door.  Feel free to share in the bliss though.

Also, we are hoping to send out Christmas cards so if you don't mind, would you be so kind as to email me your address at amynash@gmail.com (or leave it in the comments if you're comfortable with that)?  We may or may not have it, so if you don't mind sending it regardless, that would be super awesome.