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Monday, January 5, 2009

Christmas and the New Year

Well, here I am sitting down to blog--when I should be cleaning my desk and planning lessons for the first week back to school. Andrew keeps reminding me that I should blog. If I don't do it now, it may never get done.

Christmas was a true blessing. As I mentioned in a few posts back, we were snowed in at my parent's house for about a week. It was really fun and forced us to be focused on good family time together. We played a lot of games (a favorite Stockton family pastime!), put together a puzzle, ate a lot of yummy food, and journeyed out to Mass a couple of times.

I wasted a lot of time playing a game on Andrew's iPod Touch called "Fuzzle." I played it so much that it has become a verb: "I think I'll fuzzle for a while" or "I can't do that now, I'm too busy fuzzling!" I taught my mom how to fuzzle, which caught the interest of my dad. Now, they are both addicted. Fortunately, they downloaded the free trial, so their score maxes out at 400 points. As I said, I have wasted much time fuzzling, and it did not help that my brother beat my high score by leaps and bounds. I have spent the last week trying to beat him. A couple of days ago, I reclaimed my position for having the highest score on Andrew's iPod. Now my life can go on!

We went up to Bellingham on December 27th after a brief visit with my mom's extended family at our annual family Christmas party. In Bellingham, we were able to visit with our (Andrew's) cousins Erin, Bill, and their daughter Sydney. It was really nice to see them and visit. They were at our wedding, but we did not have much quality time with them.

Being with Mom and Dad St.Hilaire was such a treat! We have not been able to spend a lot of time with them over the past few months. And our visits are usually pretty short. We were able to stay in Bellingham for a little less than a week. As the end drew near, Andrew reflected that it was a full week. Pretty much every night we had something going on; either delicious food to eat, fantastic company, or fun games (or all three)! We brought a few games up and taught the folks and Lou and Jenna how to play them.

One of the best gifts we received for Christmas was from Mom St.Hilaire. She gave us our own "friendship table cloth". The St.Hilaires have a tradition that whenever guests are over for a meal, they sign their names and date on the "friendship table cloth". Then Mom embroiders over the signature. Their table cloth is very full the names of all the people who have visited them over the years. It is difficult to find an empty spot! At our rehearsal dinner Mom had a blank table cloth out for everyone to sign. She has spent the past few months since the weddings embroidering all of the signatures (for us and Lou and Jenna). She gave us the table cloth for Christmas. It is ready to be filled with the names of all our future guests. We are so honored to carry on this beautiful St.Hilaire tradition in our own home! So when you come to dine with us, guess what you will see on our table?

Yesterday, I was paying bills and found myself writing 2009 on the checks. Holy cow- is it really 2009 already?! This year will bring many changes for us. Changes we are looking forward to, but changes that will really stretch us. The first (and biggest) change will happen when Baby St.Hilaire comes out. As Andrew told me, we will need to be less focused our ourselves once our baby is born. Another change is I will be done with teaching and taking night classes in April. In July we will be moving out of our house and into one of the apartments in my parent's house. In the fall I will need to do student teaching and thus leave our baby with his grandma during the days (this will probably be most hard on me!). Andrew will continue working with Swingsetmall.com and growing in his business skills. Yes, we will be very busy in 2009!

We hope you are all doing well!

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