I’ve been making excuses for my lack of posting in the last three months– I was busy! I had homework! Studying! And yet, I wasted quite a bit of time playing Minesweeper, etc. I simply got out of the habit, and so now– when I *have* had time to post (albiet not as much as I’d hoped)— I still haven’t done it. Bad me. 
So here I am, trying to make up for all that. What’s been happening?
I had a lovely holiday. Got lots of of good presents, including a new watch and a wool pea coat. 
Good times with family, too. Christmas Eve was spent at my grandmother’s house, where a good time was had by all, despite the large hole left by the death of my grandfather and great grandmother. Usually the festivities at Grandma By’s encompass both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but in an effort to make things easier on grandma, we squeezed them all into Christmas Eve, which left us scratching our heads over what to do on Christmas itself. We’ve never spent a Christmas at home before, ever. But with my brother getting married, it was a good time for us to start new Christmas traditions. My brother’s fianc???e stayed the night on Christmas Eve (since she didn’t go home to Buffalo for Christmas), we slept in until 9:00 before we opened presents, had our traditional Christmas pancake breakfast, and then headed over to my Grandma & Grandpa Johnson’s for lunch. After a nice visit and some yummy food, we came back home, where Grandma By paid us a visit (she visited all the familes, starting down south in Mapleton and working her way up), and then spent the rest of the night playing board games (Ticket to Ride is *so* fun, and my team won at Cranium! TWICE! :O) and watching Christmas movies. Mom had bought a roast for Christmas dinner, but first we weren’t hungry enough and then we decided it just wasn’t Christmas-y enough, since we have roasts for Sunday dinner a lot. After throwing around a few possibilities, we ended up–get this– getting Chinese takeout. Fa ra ra ra ra.
Since then it’s been a whirl of wedding stuff. We hit after-Christmas sales to pick up snowflake-themed decorations on Monday, and to get Amanda’s wedding dress (which is GORGEOUS), and started printing out labels for the invitations, which were ready this morning. Ben and Amanda are at this moment sitting in the Cincinnati airport on a layover on their way to Buffalo for New Years, so Ben can meet his future in-laws once before the wedding. We’ve got a price list of the flowers (purple lisianthus will be available! YAY!) and things are starting to come together. But there is still so much to do, and school starts on Tuesday.
We did take time out yesterday to go see Finding Neverland, which I highly recommend. I admit to shedding a few tears at the end. It makes me even more excited about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, not just because of Johnny Depp, but also because the young boy who played Peter is going to be playing Charlie. He was excellent.
I’d better get back to stuffing envelopes.