Happy New Year!

Maybe I’m a bit late for my New Year post, but since this is my first post of 2014, I hereby deem the timing appropriate.  Everything this year (er, last year?) has been a little delayed.  We will be sending out New Years cards instead of Christmas cards this year . . . mostly because I just didn’t have time to do any holiday prep prior to the holidays.  I’m lucky I got my Christmas shopping done on time – thank you Amazon! Being a working (and pregnant) parent is time consuming/hard/exhausting!  (I have a feeling that will be a theme to most of my posts for the next several months . . .)

I am very fortunate that my office closes during the week between Christmas and New Years.  Due to G’s daycare schedule, I took an extra couple days and had two full weeks off of work!  I haven’t had that much consecutive time off since maternity leave!  Bonus: we didn’t have to travel this year.  The furthest we went was down to San Diego to do Christmas Eve with my parents.  Aaron’s mom came up to us for Christmas Day. 

Our staycation meant I finally had time to accomplish things around the house that I have been meaning to do for MONTHS!  Seriously, it took the entire two weeks to finally get caught up on laundry! (Why do we have so many clothes?!)  I finally got around to breaking out my maternity clothes and packing away the clothes that no longer fit. (I still have a couple pairs of non-maternity pants/shorts that fit!)  I cleaned out G’s drawers of the clothes she’s outgrown and re-organized her closet.

One of my favorite things this break was that I hired a cleaning team to come in and clean the entire house – it was my anniversary present to Aaron (ok, it was really more a gift to the both of us).  When I was a kid, I never understood the “cleaning before the cleaning person coms” thing – but now that I’m a grown up, I totally get it!  We had to clear all the surfaces and make sure the clothes were picked up off the floor (even more motivation to get the laundry all done!) so that the cleaning people could actually clean.  I got a great deal from Homejoy.  Overall their services were good – I only asked for general cleaning, not a deep clean.  We had 2 people for 3 hours and they managed to get to (almost) everything that I asked them to do.  My one complaint is that they didn’t put everything back in their places.  I had to rearrange all the items on the surfaces they dusted to get them back to where I wanted them.  But really, if that’s my only complaint, it must mean they did a decent job – right?

In addition to getting the house more organized, we took advantage of the beautiful Southern California weather and went out and about a bunch!  We took G on her first trip to the Zoo and went to Lake Balboa almost every other day!  I had originally thought that I might take G up to the mountains so she could see snow for the first time.  But the weather here, near the coast, was so gorgeous that I was afraid we would make a 2-hour drive for nothing, so that will have to wait.  I’m sure there will be more opportunities later this winter to take her to see snow. 

Aaron and I went to Disneyland and had an anniversary dinner at the Blue Bayou.  We got to see “snow” at Disneyland as part of their light show, so I guess that’s something.  Having grown up in San Diego, I always kind of wished that it would snow just for Christmas so that I could experience a “White Christmas” like you see in the movies and on TV.  But then when I’m wearing tanks tops and shorts on New Years Day and my sister texts me the forecast of 0 degrees Fahrenheit from where she is in New York, I am very grateful that snow is only a 2 hour drive away.

And now a photo dump of some of our activities during the winter break:

 

At the Blue Bayou celebrating our anniversary.

G all dressed up and ready for Xmas Eve.

This is the face of someone who is very tired and needs some rest before Santa comes!

G with her gift from Santa (her very own "laptop" - maybe now she won't always try to play with Mommy & Daddy's?

G was enthralled by the gorillas at the Zoo!