This ‘n That

— 1 —

Big news! My brother-in-law Alex got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Krystle on New Year’s Eve! (That’s them next to Jose in this picture above from Emma’s birthday party back in August.) I’m very excited for them!

— 2 —

My mom flew back to Charlotte on Wednesday, but we had a great time while she was here. We ate out, went to Zoo Lights, walked around the neighborhood, ran errands, went to the movies, and hung out around the house. I feel lucky to have such a great mom — I don’t think I will ever get tired of her visits! She also hung out with Emma while Jose and I enjoyed two date nights (woohoo!) and one trip to the Toyota dealership to do some test driving.

— 3 —

Yes, a car purchase is likely in the near future, since it’s time to replace my nearly 10-year-old Xterra. It’s starting to show its age, and I’m unwilling to put any more money into it. I had to buy a new battery a few months ago, and I was annoyed to even have to spend THAT. We’re somewhat on the fence about what to buy — we only have one carseat and it’s in our Highlander, so this car will primarily just go to and from work. The smartest thing to do would be to get a small, fuel-efficient sedan…but we both like sitting higher up off the road, so we’re looking at smaller SUVs. We drove a Rav4 the other day, and want to look at the Mazda CX-5 as well.

— 4 —

Yesterday Emma went back to daycare for the first time in almost two weeks, but I’m not going back to work until Monday. I spent the day running errands, getting a hair cut, and getting the house back in semi-order after the holidays. Our Christmas decorations are officially put away and the tree is waiting on the curb for pickup. With the addition of several new toys, the family room is overrun with kid stuff, so today I’m planning to go through Emma’s stuff pack away several things that she’s outgrown — baby items like plastic keys and rattles. On top of that, I plan to spread out the rest of her toys between bins in the family room, her bedroom, and our bonus room so that she has some in each place and they aren’t all in a giant heap.

— 5 —

Yesterday I also wrote down our vacation plans for the coming year and how many days of annual leave we’d need to take off work. Between holidays, trips to see our families, a kid-free vacation and a wedding, all of our vacation days are basically spoken for already. Therefore, no one else is allowed to get married or otherwise plan events that require us to take off work this year!!

— 6 —

I’ve been slowly (very slowly) making my way through the archives of this blog and cleaning up old entries from my pre-Wordpress days. I wrote a lot of shorter posts back then — sometimes multiple posts per day — so I’ve also been deleting several of that type that are now pointless. I’m also combining others where it makes sense. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while in an effort to consolidate my 12+ years of blogging into something a little less scattered.

One observation? Clearly I was REALLY NOT VERY BUSY at work back then. Heh.

— 7 —

Earlier this week I officially handed over responsibility for the Miss Houston, Miss Bay Area and Miss Kemah pageant websites and program books to a new person. I have mixed feelings about it. It was fun to work with a client, product a nice product, and earn a little extra cash for design work…but I don’t have time for it these days. On top of that, the process was no longer helping me grow or stretch my design skills. I realized it was time to move on, for the benefit of both parties. I hope I’ll have another opportunity to do freelance work in the future. We shall see.

(Linking up: 7 Quick Takes, hosted by Conversation Diary)