Who's yo daddy???

Larry and I had a very interesting experience while out shopping the day after Christmas. What made it more interesting was that this wasn't the first time this has happened. We were at a store, and there was a young woman with 2 little kids. I'm not sure there is a nice way to put this, so I'll be blunt. She was trashy. Her youngest kid (about 2 years old) was pointing at Larry and yelling, "There's daddy, there's daddy!" Something is very, very wrong with this picture! While we laughed pretty hard about it (the mom was insanely embarrassed!), we realized there must be alot of babies who don't know their daddys! Sad!

Christmas 2009

Zoe and I next to our tree...The tree is leaning a little!

Larry frosting cookies. This was only the second time he had done this and was super excited :)!

Christmas didn't work out quite as we had planned. Larry finished work on Monday afternoon, and we had planned to take the last flight out to Seattle on Monday night and then fly back to Chicago on Christmas Day. Larry had to work today, Sunday, and we still hadn't cleaned our old apartment, so we were a little tight on time. We checked the weather on Monday when Larry got home from work and saw that Chicago was expecting a large ice/rain/snow storm on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. We were a little worried about that affecting flights on Christmas Eve, which in turn would make the flights on Christmas Day a mess. After going back and forth for a few hours, we decided it would be in our best interest to not chance it and stay in Chicago. Since we are cutting back this year, Larry and I decided not to get each other gifts...But that was before we knew we would be here by ourselves. We did get the storm, but it was a day later than expected and would not have affected the flights for us at all. We were a little bummed, but we were able to get the old apartment all cleaned, and really took a few days to relax. We played card games and board games, read, put up the Christmas tree, and opened our one present from my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Ken. We got about 10"-12" of snow on Christmas Day and the 26th, but we still managed to get out of the house on the 26th for a few hours to check out the sales. We are anxiously awaiting our presents that my mom shipped out, and we will be having Christmas again on Wednesday!

Looking forward to 2010

2010 will bring a few changes for Larry and I. I had been taking classes for the past few semesters to finish up a few pre-reqs to apply for nursing school. After looking into a few programs and realizing the commitment of three years I would have to make to staying here in Chicago (AAAHHHH!!!), I realized to go a different route. I have always been enamored by the O.R., and was even able to observe a few surgeries with my orthopedic surgeon back when I was originally a nursing major my freshman year of college. My surgeons surgical tech at the time told me I should really look into surgical tech programs, so I did...10 years later! I was admitted into the program at the local community college and classes start on January 14th! It is a very intense program with class for 7 hours, 5 days a week, and then once clinicals start, I will be in the classroom for 7 hours, 2 days a week, and in the O.R. for 8 hours, 3 days a week. This obviously meant I could not work full-time, so my last day with Varsity is December 31st. Luckily, our offices are closed, so my last two weeks of work are paid vacation days! Woohoo! Leaving my full-time job also means cutting our income in more than half, so we will be living a bit different than we had been. We downsized to a one bedroom apartment, and I will not be able to take as many trips to Macy's. For those of you questioning my shopping locale, our Macy's out here in Chicago is a trillion times better than Nordy's! I love to find a good deal, shop sales, and clip coupons, so hopefully that will come in handy this year of being poor :)! Larry and I are very excited about this new journey, and starting my career in healthcare! I will post pictures of our new place once we get our storage closet and can clear it out a bit!