Happy Holidays!!

Hopefully everyone had a fantastic Christmas with family and friends. I wish that I could say that I did, but I just wasn’t in the mood this year. Christmas is probably my all-time favourite time of the year, next to Easter, and this year, I just wasn’t feeling it. Usually I like to buy presents for everyone and decorate the house with a lot of lights, and this year I didn’t do anything -- no lights, ornaments or presents. I enjoyed myself at Aaron’s family events once we got to them, but in all honesty I really didn’t want to go to any of them. I am glad that I did, otherwise I would have had a few really lonely days and would have missed out on some really good laughs. I’ve lived far away from home (Winnipeg) for 13 years and this was one of the hardest times at Christmas I have ever had. It’s been hard to get into any sort of Christmas spirit, probably because I’m not quite used to the winter down here. Heck, I’m still wearing my fall jacket, how could I be prepared for Christmas, it’s not -30 with a few feet of snow. Anyways, I’ve only been home for Christmas 2 or 3 times in the last 13 years, but this time I got to face-time with everyone and that made me miss my family a million times more and made me wish that I would have just jumped in my car late last week and surprised them all by showing up on the door-step. Some of you might not know this, but my grandma has been in the hospital for the last month, and for the first time in her entire life she wasn’t home with family for Christmas. That was really hard for me. I can’t imagine her being in the hospital all by herself, as she is usually the life of our family gatherings. You wouldn’t think that at 2 or 3am she’d still be up watching everyone play cards or board games, but she always was. She’s one awesome grandma, who I miss dearly and really hope that she starts to get better soon.  Some good news though…Morgan and Todd (came down for their wedding in March) welcomed Adalynn Marie into this world on Christmas Eve at 6:30am. We had dinner with them earlier this month and she was having contractions then, I was excited that perhaps I’d be around when someone goes into labour, no such luck, Adalynn decided to stay inside for a couple more weeks. We haven’t had a chance to go see her yet, but hopefully next week.  And, a really good friend of mine got engaged!! I won’t say who yet, as it’s not my news to share with everyone, as I am not sure if she’s told everyone yet. But I am super excited for them and can’t wait for the wedding!!!

We are leaving for Evansville, Indiana in a couple of hours for the Cyclones Bus Trip. We get to go to the Cyclones game tonight and tomorrow around lunch time we will board the bus again to head to Nashville to watch the Predators play the LA Kings, then to return to Cincinnati after the game. It’s going to be a long, but super fun weekend. Josh and Vaughn are going with us, should be a great time. Sunday we have to work the Bengals game, should be interesting with the assumed lack of sleep we will get.

My first week of break was not nearly as relaxing as I had hoped it was going to be. We had two Christmas parties on the 14th, and then got up early to go to the gym almost every day last week. I also worked a day and a half, had Aaron’s birthday dinner, birthday party, Dorsey family Christmas and worked the Bengals game this past Sunday. Monday night we went and signed me up at the nearby gym, got a work out in, and then came home and did nothing but sit on the couch and watch some tv, something obviously extremely rare for us.  The Bengals game was quite interesting on Sunday, as we only had 8 people to work the booth and we usually have 10 or 11. We definitely learned that we can’t have any less than 8 people working otherwise we’ll really struggle. Last home game is this coming Sunday and I think that we should be alright for numbers. Fingers crossed. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but we have our own food/beer booth near the club level at Paul Brown Stadium and the money we make goes towards the fraternity, or in my case, some of it will go towards my Habitat for Humanity trip in March, mostly to the fraternity though. We sell hot dogs, metts, brats, pretzels, nachos, hot chocolate, and beer.

Time for me to go pick up Aaron! Go Cyclones Go!!!

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