Ummm...yes we are still here

So apparently we fell off of the face of the earth for a while..no not really. We are still here but just not blogging.

We are pretty much crazy from now until March. And it took a couple weeks to recover from our Christmas hangover. Do you know what I am talking about? After hitting 5 different present openings in two days and trying to find places for all those new toys, take the tree down, send out thank you cards etc. You need some recovery time. Not to mention having to go back to work after taking the majority of two weeks off over Christmas/New Years.

Then there was the horrible cold streak that made me want to crawl deep toward the center of the earth in search of heat. I like the snow, but am not too big on the -30 wind chills. The up side of all this is that now that it hit 33 above zero today, it feels practically balmy outside.

So you are saying...wait...stop...what happened at Christmas?? Well Christmas was a lot of fun and a lot of crazy like it normally is. Everything was pretty pleasant. We opened our presents to each other Xmas Eve morning, then went to Lyle's parents Xmas Eve Afternoon, then went to my grandparents' house Xmas Eve night. Then Christmas Day we got up and opened presents from Santa and then went over to my parents' house to open more presents to each other.

Lots of wonderful presents were obtained, much food was eaten, and much fun had. Keegan woke up the day after Christmas and exclaimed "Where are we going to today to open presents!?" Keegan really got into Christmas this year. He was almost as excited about giving presents as he was about receiving them. Of course where-ever we were he had a lot to say to everyone...he is still quite the ham.

Speaking of Keegan being a ham one of the highlights of the Christmas season was Keegan's Christmas Program at daycare.  They sung us three songs and it was super cute.  Of course in one of the songs Keegan has to interrupt the whole thing and ask..."Do Candy Canes Wink?"  How's that for a life question I thought I would never have to answer?  Check out a short video clip of it at the below link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2zCewcYfQ


But then after Christmas is the recovery period. So for a nice easy recovery we have the following planned...
- Plan Keegan's third b-day party
- Go out to the plant in Oregon for work for basically the whole week next week.
- Get back from the plant; meet with financial adviser, have company CEO out for a visit at my work and do presentations
- Have Keegan's bday party
- Finish planning our trip to London
- End of Feb. go back out to the plant
- Return from plant go on our trip to London, England.

Amidst all of this are other things like swimming lessons, trip to the ice rink, and hopefully some sledding. Then other less fun things like our company taxes, our personal taxes, and work, work, work.

I try to remember I am lucky to have an awesome job...even though that awesome job requires me to travel almost once a month now. I try to remember that at least I am not traveling to China. I actually don't mind Medford, OR. But it puts a bit of a hit in the personal plans. And on months where we go on a personal vacation I feel like I am somewhere else more than (or as much as) I am home. It is general craziness. But in its own way it is fun sometimes too.  It is always interesting to have a lot of variety in a month.

On top of this all my book blog has been slowly gaining popularity and momentum. I have been getting contacted 1-2 times per month to review books for authors; so that is kind of cool. Unfortunately I spend probably an hour or so on the blog every day and another hour or so reading. The other interesting thing is author's have been asking me if I want to do interviews on my blog...so far I have been kind of opting not to do that.

I mean interviews would be cool; but it is just another thing I need to organize on top of having a family, a job, and a company. A lot of people have asked if I will start running contests...I am not sure. Another thing that takes time. One new thing I am doing this year is a bunch of reading challenges. So, that should be fun. But as time goes on it just takes more and more time. I enjoy doing it so that is cool; but a girl only has so much time in one day. I wish I could go with less than 5 hours of sleep a night, but that's not an option :-)

Anyway, enough about that.   To see all of the Christmas madness you can go here.

Hope everyone had equally awesome holidays.  Maybe for the next blog entry I will talk about Keegan and his love for dams and his concern about dams getting too tired because daycare uses too much electricity...