Getting ready for 2008

I'm not sure if everyone that has gotten married and changed their last name or just changed their name period has gone through a transition like I have. It feels weird (not in a bad way) to sign Miller after signing Maynard for my entire "handwriting" life. Although I'm sure this isn't such a massive change since the first letter is the same and Miller isn't very difficult. I mean it's not like going from Mastronardi to Zulewczykski or anything. In fact it sort of feels like I'm forging someone else's signature, if that makes sense? I had practiced the signature before in the months leading up to the wedding. Sort of like when you're in junior high and you write you name with the person you have a crush on. It gave me a tingle everytime I did it. It still does. So I'm wondering to all you married ladies who have taken their husbands surname, when does the tingley newness wear off?

Ok sorry, now that I'm done babbling. Christmas went pretty smoothly. It tends to get difficult to manage our time when you both have parents that are divorced and all remarried. This means that in a mere 48-72 hours (from December 23-25th) my husband and I feel like we ran a Christmas covered marathon. Not that we don't love everyone we visit. We do. It's just difficult for everyone to feel like they are the most important. You don't want to disappoint your family and/or seem rude when you're only at their home for a couple hours when the other parent got double the time. Of course everywhere you go has a TON of food and again you don't want to be rude by saying how incredibly STUFFED you are from the previous two places you had already visited that day. I mean how many shrimp rings can I possibly endure before I start sweating shellfish! haha!

This year was particularly difficult because Steve was laid off about 6 days before Christmas (gotta love that Michigan economy). Also we had purchased all of our Christmas gifts in Mexico on our honeymoon. Since my luggage was subsequently lost, Christmas was RE-purchased for everyone. This was the hard part. We didn't want to seem cheap, but we spent so much for it all to be lost and not have the money to replace it once we got home. Of course American Airlines is STILL looking. It's been 37 days. I don't think their going to find it. Not to be pessimistic, but my hopes have long gone away for this one.

In other Christmas news, my wonderful husband started to replace my tshirt collection that was lost to the luggage fiasco. He found some pretty cool ones at Penny Pinchers and other places. My favorite though is the one my sister bought me. It's from threadless.com It says on the front "Meat is murder" and then in smaller letters below is"tasty, tasty, murder" I cracked up! Here's a picture from the website:

Steve also got me Dance Dance Revolution, now I can tone up while "bustin a groove" haha!

Oh and keep on the lookout for our wedding announcement in the News Herald (www.thenewsherald.com) Hopefully it will be in this Sunday's paper.