From the Inside Out

Millions of people across the world will celebrate Valentine’s day tomorrow. For many, it’s the perfect time to express their love for significant others or spouses. For others, it’s a falsified, commercialized excuse for selling flowers, cards, and candy. Regardless of your opinion about the holiday, it provides an excuse to fire up the romance and remind the special ones in your life that you love them.

Six Useless, but Fun Facts for Valentine’s Day:

• 188 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion. (This total excludes packaged kids valentines for classroom exchanges.)
• Over 50 percent of all Valentine’s Day cards are purchased in the six days prior to the observance, making Valentine’s Day a procrastinator’s delight.
• Research reveals that more than half of the U.S. population celebrates Valentine’s Day by purchasing a greeting card.
• There are 119 single men (i.e., never married, widowed or divorced) who are in their 20s for every 100 single women of the same ages.
• 2.2 million marriages take place in the United States annually. That breaks down to more than 6,000 a day.
• Kissing unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men.

Now for something a little more useful. If the news about our struggling economy has you down and you’re looking for a less expensive way to celebrate the day, why not plan a quiet dinner at home and then snuggle up with a good romantic movie?

Here are the Top 10 on my Valentine’s Day list:

• The Princess Bride — you can’t go wrong with this movie. It’s a classic and one of the most quoted romantic movies of all time. Besides, it’s got the whole package — humor, action, and romance — and the guys like it too.
• Ever After — the classic Cinderella story in a 16th century setting.
• Pride and Prejudice (not the zombie version ) — great movie based on the book by Jane Austen.
• When Harry Met Sally — Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan set out to see if men and women can ever just be friends.
• Sweet Home Alabama — A great song and a great movie with a classic love triangle between Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey.
• French Kiss — Another Meg Ryan film primarily set in France…after all, Paris is the most romantic city in the world.
• Pretty Woman — a 90s version of Pygmalion with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.
• Dirty Dancing — an oldie, but goodie.
• How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days — Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson prove that love conquers all, even when trying your best to mess it up.
• Australia — an epic romantic adventure starring Nicole Kidman and the “sexiest man alive”, Hugh Jackman.

Free feel to comment below and share your own list.

One of the saddest times of the year is when I gather up the Christmas decor and place it back in the closet.  There are no more lights, nativity scenes, nutcrackers, or Christmas cheer.  The house seems empty.  It’s the last sign that the holiday is officially over and work is about to begin again.  I always find it a little depressing.

This year the holiday has come and gone way too quickly.  I wasn’t able to properly savour it, and I’m not ready for it to be over.  Alas, I don’t have a choice.  Life continues to move forward at a breakneck speed.  It doesn’t care whether I’m ready or not.  As I pondered those thoughts today while packing everything up, I was reminded of the words to ”Boxing Day”, a song from Relient K’s Christmas album:

Take it all down, Christmas is over
But do not despair, rather be glad
We had a good year, now let’s have another
Remembering all the good times that we had

Oh, no more lights glistening
No more carols to sing
But Christmas, it makes way for spring

That song always seems to lift my post-Christmas blues.  Yes, Christmas is over.  The lights are gone; the carols won’t be sung again until December, but there’s still a reason to be happy.  Winter is coming to an end.  In only a few short months, we’ll soon see the grass turn green, and flowers will begin to bloom again.  Christmas makes way for new life and a new year.  Rejoice, it makes way for Spring. 

I spent the last day of the year preparing for our annual New Year’s Eve bash. We had a great time tonight with our friends from ALC. To view all of the pictures, go to the Photos section of the blog.

Clarissa playing the 2008 Year in Review game

The girls win!!

The guys trying to unscramble their NYE words for the 2008 Ultimate Survivor game

Clarissa vs. Derrick in the “worm” eating challenge

All gone…Kris wins his challenge

The remaining girls with their finished puzzle — they win this immunity challenge

The endurance challenge

Mitts ready? Survivors Ready?

My card tower is the tallest…oh yeah baby!

It’s almost 2009…getting ready for the balloon drop!

2008 had its moments — some good and some bad. It brought many challenges and a few disappointments. The highs were great, and the lows were rough. To be completely honest, I’m not sorry to see 2008 end. The New Year always seems to bring the promise of a fresh start, a new beginning. I’m ready to move forward in 2009…no looking back. I’m excited about the future and can’t wait to see what God has in store this year!

Happy New Year to All!

We celebrated Christmas today with the Powers family in Forney. 

For a few highlights from the celebration at my house yesterday and the festivities today with Gary’s family, check out the video below. 

NOTE:  For those of you who know that I got a hi-def Flip camera for Christmas, don’t judge it by this video.  I uploaded the low res version to YouTube.  I’ll probably swap it out for the HD version when I have more time for uploading. 

Now it’s time for a Christmas flashback video…check out this one from 2006.  It’s fun to see how much the kids have changed, especially Jackson.  He was only a few months old when this vid was shot.

Gone are the days when I wake up at the crack of dawn eager to open presents. The excitement is still there, but it’s tempered by the desire to sleep. Of course, when you go to bed at 5 am, it’s hard to get up early — presents or no presents. The anticipation of Christmas morning and curiosity of what was inside the wrapped boxes under the tree did help me wake up by mid-morning, though.

Gary waited patiently for me, and when I awoke we celebrated our 15th Christmas together as a married couple by ripping into our brightly decorated packages. Sharing gifts is one of the things I love about Christmas. It never gets old.

We played with our new “toys” and then got ready for the lunchtime arrival of my family. My parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephews all convened at our house to continue the celebration. We had a nice lunch and then got down to the exciting stuff — exchanging presents. Watching the kids open gifts is a blast. It’s a special treat to see Christmas through the eyes of a child.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the kids’ new toys, listening to Gary and Nick playing the Wii Guitar Hero, and simply hanging out enjoying each other’s company. I am truly blessed and thankful to have such a great family.

It was early evening by the time we said our goodbyes and the family returned to their homes. Gary and I settled down for a quiet evening together, but soon hunger began to rear its ugly head. We didn’t collect enough leftovers for a full meal and hadn’t stocked up our pantry with food for the holiday. We eat a lot of takeout so we don’t keep much food at home. Normally it’s not a problem, but it’s not normally Christmas.

We called our regular restaurants hoping that one of them would be open for business. They weren’t. We thought maybe one of the pizza joints would be open. They weren’t either. Finally we decided to jump in the car and drive around to see what we could find. After all, this is Dallas…there had to be something open, even if it was only fast food.

As we approached the first major shopping area near our house, I started to get a bad feeling. It’s usually packed with cars and activity, but tonight it was dead. All restaurants were locked up tight. I still had hope that the 24-hour fast food joints would be open — they couldn’t let the hungry people down on Christmas, could they? To answer the question…yes, they could. Everything was closed. It was a ghost town.

Undaunted we headed towards Frisco. Finally, we saw a Jack-in-the-Box with all its lights turned on. It had a long line of cars in the drive-thru, and since it happens to be one of my most hated fast food joints, we kept going. We turned the corner. IHOP was open — Yay!

Encouraged, we kept going — there had to be others. We continued to drive, but nothing else seemed to be open so we decided to turn around. When we did, we caught sight of an open sign glowing in the window of Snookie’s, a local grill and burger joint.

Aha, instant success! We would not go hungry tonight. Thank God for little Christmas miracles…hehe!

With a full belly, I reflect back on the day. Exchanging gifts and spending time with family is fun, but during this time of year, I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the real reason for our celebration today. God gave us the most unselfish, perfect gift ever given. I find it amazing that He would be willing to wrap Himself in flesh, live on this earth, and give His life so I could be saved from my sins. The depth of His love is unfathomable. I don’t deserve the gift He gave to me, but He gave it anyway. That’s the true miracle of Christmas.