12 days of christmas "countdown"
11 minutes until I take a coffee break
10 days of vacation
9 days until New Years Eve
8 days until the Music City Bowl in Nashville, go Heels!!
7 airplanes to fly over break
6 o'clock a.m. flight to Texas tomorrow morning
5 + hours will be spent watching the Badgers in the Rose Bowl!
4 grad school classes PASSED [2 with honors :) ]
3 airports to pay a luggage fee
2 days until Christmas eve
1 WONDERFUL WINTER OF 2010

Final exams are over! I survived my first semester of PhD school. I am DONE until January (except for my full time job).....

Yes, it's a real tree

Jancie and I put our Christmas tree up a couple weeks ago. Though, it didn't look quite right until there were presents underneath.

We decorated all by ourselves, there were only a few light strand and outlet mishaps (nothing burned down) and it was a "learning experience" for me since I've never set up a Christmas tree before.
We had LOTS of roses left over from Liz's wedding!

Dexter: Season Gingerbread

Last week Liz, Jancie, Emily and I got together to eat chicken and dumplings and make gingerbread houses. It was Liz's last weekend as a single girl, her wedding is this Saturday!
We set up our supplies (candy) and got to work.
My gingerbread creation was the "chalet", which looked more like a little tent-shack, so after I was satisfied with it's candycane theme I decided to spice it up a little.
Lately I've been obsessed with watching Dexter. Finals are coming up so it's the perfect way to distract myself and put off studying. For those of you who don't know, Dexter is a tv show on Showtime. The main character, Dexter, is a very likable serial killer who also works in forensics at the Miami Metro Police station as a blood spatter analyst. The twist is he only kills murderers who don't get caught by the police.

I created a crime scene in the little Gingerbread community. As you can see, the marshmallow snowman at the chalet has been shot! Check out the wound to the stomach and the red sprinkle blood spatter on his right side! It's time to call in Dexter!

Dexter checks out the chalet but can't find any evidence of who shot the snowman. The snow marshmallows on the hershey bar road might be covering up evidence.
Ah ha! The murder weapon was stashed between the two red frosting and sprinkles walkways! Someone hid it behind the sugarplum pine tree.
Dexter does his thing (watch the show for more details), finds the murderer, and makes sure that the gingerbread town is never again terrorized by the Tiny Marshmallow Snowman Killer (as nicknamed by the Gingerbread Times).
The end.

Little Scoundrel

Little Blade's favorite perch, it makes him almost as tall as the other dogs:
Blade likes to pull on Ben's sweatshirt sleeve
He also likes to hang out under the coffee table and "play"

Baby Blade at the dog park! This is an easy way to make him very sleepy.
Little bug wants to cross the fence and play in the big dog area, but he is too little
Uh oh, he spotted me
He was a crowd favorite and made friends with pups his own size
Very sleepy on the car ride home:

China: the ultimate destination

I was reading my usual list of blogs today when I came across something that is too great not to share. What if you wanted to know how to get from Japan to China? Well, you would probably Google Map it right? Okay, you probably would not do that but if you DID this is what you would get. See step #43.




Anyway, this started me thinking. I really wanted to go to China I would obviously start from the United States and not Japan. More specifically I would start from Chapel Hill, NC. So I googled directions from my house in Chapel Hill to China. Please see below

There you have it! Anyone interested in going with me? It will only take 38 days and 17 hours!!!

RALLY TO RESTORE SANITY AND/OR FEAR

Saturday was a long and CRAAZZZY day! I woke up around 5:30 to catch our 7:30am flight which got into Baltimore around 8:30am. My mom and I went out to the bus line to catch the B-30 and joined a line of people also going to the rally. People were there from all over! Florida, Arizona, Detroit. And lots of them had signs and folding chairs that they brought with them on the plane.

When two B-30 buses drove right passed us without stopping we knew the only way to make it downtown was to take a cab. The cab took us to the closest metro stop but the metro was overflowing and a HUGE line of people snaked out of the metro stop and wrapped around the parking lot. We said forget this and took the cab the rest of the way into town. It was sooo worth it.

The mall was packed all the way from the stage in front of the capital building back to the Washington monument, more people filled the streets and sidewalks on the sides of the mall. The picture doesn't do the crowd justice, but it was AWESOME. People climbed up in the trees and on top of the port-o-potties to get better views (and it looked like the roofs started to cave in). We just used the bathrooms inside the museums.

Taking a break on the lawn
National Gallery of Art
Reasonable sign
Mom on the steps.
We could not hear or see a thing going on on the stage so we just walked around and hung out on the grass. It was a gorgeous day so it was nice to be outside. Luckily we taped the rally on DVR and watched it when we got home!

We left the rally a little before it ended to make sure we would get to the airport. This time we got on the metro which was already crammed with people and then the B-30 bus to the airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and got home around 10pm, totally exhausted, but sooooooooo happy to see boys! They were happy to see us too even though they look a little shell shocked in these pictures.

Rally to Restore Sanity

My mom and I are planning to attend Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity on Saturday October 30th in Washington DC. We even got T-Shirts. I can't wait!

Great News!!!

My best friend, Mali, just graduated from nursing school!!!! Now she is Nurse Mali! Congratulations girl, I am SO proud of you!! I love you :)

Guest Blogger

Today Little Blade wanted to blog!
So I gave him some coffee so he wouldn't fall asleep while blogging:
And showed him how to use the keyboard.
So now I am just going to let him take it from here.
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New Puppy!

Yesterday we picked up my parents' new puppy, Blade! We drove about an hour outside of Chapel Hill to where all the puppies were and visited with Blade(far right) and his brothers and sisters. They are about 7 1/2 weeks old.
His brothers
Mom with the new pupAt first weren't exactly sure which one he was because the owners weren't there yet and there were identical white pups in both kennels (right now he is pure white but will start to get brown spots in a few months). However, when I went to check out his twin on the other side of the fence it seemed like he knew he was ours.
"I'm the one! take me home!!"In the car on the way home Blade played in his pink towel.

And then he got to meet his new family! They still aren't too sure if he is a real dog or not but hopefully they will become friends soon...



So far his favorite things to do are sleep and eat. And sometimes he does both at the same time:
He loves to play but has a hard time staying awake more than 20 minutes at a time.

More to come!