Digging Out: My Birthday (December 23)

We got back Thursday night from Christmas travels.  The timing of everything has really thrown my clock/calendar 'off'.  I'm accustomed (from 12 consecutive years of this schedule) to returning home from Christmas with a week between travels and the return of students.  This year:  1 precious day (new student orientation takes place in our building TODAY)!

Being gone 13 days means lots of mail to catch up on.  Being gone over Christmas means bringing home more stuff than we left with.  Leaving without finishing up all of our pre-Christmas projects means we're starting this new year off behind.  We have Christmas decorations to take down, people!  I will be honest and confess:  I loathe taking down Christmas decorations.  I'll go to the dentist any day.  Seriously.  Christmas decorations -- I almost would rather not put them up to begin with!  (Maybe because putting that stuff back into storage requires moving furniture in some places and moving vehicles with wheels in other places?)

So, we're home and I don't know where to start.  This post is here all because I picked up a camera.  Yes!  I went to move a camera from an inconvenient spot.  Because it wasn't one that was taken on our travels, my thought process went something like this: "Oh, I better see if the battery needs charged.  [Yes] But wait, what pics are on this camera?  Oh!  Our family Christmas and my 2 favorite memories from my birthday! [the day we were to leave after lunch for Ohio but didn't get on the road until nearly 5PM].  I have to post those before they get moved off the card and pass their expiration date for posting."

My favorite people were so sweet and made me breakfast in bed.  I love, love, love the image above and I don't want to forget this.  Ellie was singing her heart out to me (Ellie doesn't sing.  Hardly EVER.  She's starting to more, but it's still pretty rare).  It was so sweet and she just struck me as really grown up in that moment.  Oh how I love that girl.

I went in the kitchen later and found this:

Apparently the first trip to the bedroom resulted in a spilt cup of hot tea.  Hence no beverage on the tray Ellie is photographed with above!

Because my birthday "day" was so chaotic, Nathan and I celebrated 6 days later at the Easton Shopping Center in Columbus with Cheesecake Factory for lunch (YUM!), browsing Barnes and Noble, and then viewing the new Sherlock Holmes flick (I've been a big fan of this detective since my Dad read me the "Speckled Band" when I was ten or eleven).

Thanks to all of my friends and family who blessed me with phone calls, e-mails, and FB messages.  And thanks to Mom and Dad Waggoner who had dessert waiting for us when we arrived at their home Friday night, and then later watched the kids so we could have our lunch and movie date! All in all, it was a great birthday!