Birthday Spa Pictures:





Christmas Party elf pictures (do you see how many costumes we had to make!!!)

well, its official, I am a prime number again. To tell the truth, I do feel immensely smarter now that I am 23. I really really like the number 23. and you know I haven't been prime since 19 and won't be again until 29. So I am going to savor this 23. I can't explain why but I think this could be my favorite number. fo' real.

so my birthday was made fantastic by my Alamosa crew, they did a home spa theme, hilarious, we watched movies, the Bell girls made me breakfast of banana chocolate chip pancakes and we went out to dinner. Carman (my house mate) took me on a surprise road trip to Monte Vista where we went to Mudpuppies and he bought me coffee and beautiful yarn of my choice!!! Hooray!! It was lovely. and then it snowed. :) Thank you for the lovely apron Katrina, the cello strings mom and dad, the fun calender, Amy, and all the lovely cards.

I cannot wait to see my family. only a few days more, hopefully, hopefully the snow storm won't prevent me from getting to Denver.

Well the week of holiday insanity is over and I have but to glide through this next week until (!!!) I (!!!) see (!!!) my(!!!) FAMILY(!!woot!!). I cannot wait. Our cocktail party gig last night went really well, though my exhaustion and my depreciated thinking power after eight PM caught up with me a bit in the last ten minutes of playing. It was really swanky, but with neat people (they invited us to try all the cheese and wine they had set out and several really nice people talked with us), mostly doctors. And their house was this great little cottage with bright yet tasteful wall colors and really great art. Also, there is nothing like playing Bach and overhearing operation discussion ('Did it puncture through to the bone?') And though we were playing for free (because they bought us at the Charity Ball auction) they gave both of us a $50 tip!!!!!! Hooray!!! But, interestingly enough, you know you have had a change in lifestyle when you have $50 of free spending money and you can't think of anything you really really want or need. I mean last year I would be off to anthropologie in a hot second. but I think I am going to use it to buy fruit and veggies, because that is an indulgence I usually cannot afford. I either eat at the shelter or eat peanut butter and honey. This change in perspective is also noted by my appreciation of another delicacy, cheese. I love cheese, but it is so expensive. I ate a bit of Stilton and Brie last night. yum yum.

After playing, Joelle and I went to fort night where we played games, built and slept in a fort of our own construction with all the volunteers. I already have an architectural design in my head for my new living room. Because la puente owns it I am planing to install some eye hooks in the living room that will be suitable for assisting in sturdy fort building. oh yes. oh yes.





and tomorrow is my birthday and I am planning to wear my super hero cape all freakin' day long.

It is crazy busy here in Alamosa, I think we finished all the elf costumes we had to make, now I just have to get through two music gigs, a giant christmas party with santa for 400 kids, and then FORT NIGHT (aka making forts, yes!!!!) I am super excited and cannot believe that I have been so lucky as to find a group of people as passionate about forts as I am, I mean truly, it is a miracle. I should do a sociological study, looking for a correlation between those who are service oriented and those who have an affinity for fort making. interesting...Pretty much everyday this week has required jumping from one activity to the next, I have made so many lists to keep my head on straight because every morning when i leave the house i pretty much have to take everything i need. so today that inculdes a change of clothes, my cello, music, and a pie recipe. and a little dash of sanity I have stored away for weeks such as this. For all the choas of this week, next week has no programed activites (except for a viewing of little miss sunshine, a hair dying session, MY BIRTHDAY, dinner at the brew pub, and finishing making Christmas presents) cool, so i take that back, still really busy. I can't wait for vacation!!!

i have received some birthday packages and cannot decide whether or not to open them......

Today at work there was a little girl who said she could speak english, spanish, and chinese. I said 'Chinese? really, wow, say something in Chinese for me' She responded, 'Chopstick. Lo Mein. and Beef and Broccoli.'

So the saga of not enough hours in the day continues....last night after work Rachel picked me up and I recorded a cello bit to one of her songs that she was recording with Aaron (recording is interesting, you are hear all your mistakes), anyway we stayed until one AM and then hot footed it out to the country where she was house sitting and went to sleep only to find the morning came all too soon. after a quick sip o' coffee i am back at work...and already wanting this day to be over. but after work I have scheduled craft time and open mic night. i definately need a nap. something fun, though, this morning i learned how to make sopapillas, and thus my mexican cuisine knowledge continues to expand....

In response to Lauren's blog, which has no place to comment:

I miss you both so so so much!!!

Dad, you would be so proud, yesterday we played football in the park and I am not lying when I say that some of my throws drew gasps of admiration, yes, it is true, your early lessons of football throwing are still rooted within my being. It was a fantastically fun game (we played an hour and a half) and we had wildly creative plays with great names like the 'double rainbow statue of liberty with fake handoff' or 'the rainbow post' or'tic-tac-toe' or the 'flea flicker'. Our team name was the saber tooth tigers. I don't even know who won, but I do know that we had a fantastic trickery fake out at the end. Kelsea hid my frisbee under her fleece, and after she said hike, she wipped out the disc, tossed it to John while the rest of us spread across the field in rainbow formation and John threw the disc to Muck, who was in the end zone, scoring a ridiculously fabulous goal!! HOORAY!! alas, the other team was very confused and footbal soon dissipated into an enthusiastic, though short lived, game of four on four ultimate. I still got my frisbee moves, even pulling out a highly successful hammer. yes sir, It was a fine day of organized sports.


after that we had hot cocoa, went to the director of La Puente's home for cookie decorating and christmas movies, and then went to Weekends Bar for birthday Karoke for Rachel, where I conquered fears of singing in public and sang, with Rachel, Dixie Chicks 'Long Time Gone' John Denvers 'Annie Song' and Lady Marmalade's 'Moulin Rougue' it was ridiculous. and i played pool. it was fun. and today is a day of magnificent crafting and christmas present making (my room looks as if my craft box vomited its contents all over the place. its fantastic)

and that is a play by play of my weekend thus far. the end.

and lastly, a snow picture...

Last night was the charity ball and it was interesting and fun (mainly because the volunteers were all together) There was a dinner(Highlight: Kelsea finding crayons and a toy mini moses in a tree, we colored on our programs), than an auction(Highlights: Carman and Muck imitating the auctioner and listening to yourself being auctioned off (I was part of two of the auction packages, dinner and musical concert went for $375 and wine and musical concert went for $300)), and then some dancing (I was first on the dance floor) and I was home by 11:15 and went to bed, only after trying on my new running shoes I ordered online (from steepandcheap.com, thanks Jon!!) Overall, it was a fun evening and now a jam packed weekend is ahead, with two rounds of christmas cookie baking, a football game in the park, and birthday karoke for Rachel. Oh also, today Alamosa highschool won the state championship in football, 47 to 0, ending the season undefeated, a crowd of 5,000 showed up for the game (more than half the size of our town!) Way to go small town spirit.



The Hat I made



Joelle and I


My new sneakers

if the clerk at the butcher shop is 5 foot 9, what does he weigh?

We finally have our first real snow...it kind of melted during the day but now is falling hard again and is beautiful. I will post pictures soon. If I were in NC the entire city would be shut down.


and so a quote that I love and find very comforting since I don't like not knowing everything. ahem:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

How is this for blogger productivity, three times in a day. It is curious, I think its probably true that my blog exists 98% for self-affirmation and showing off my self-proclaimed cleverness (it comes and goes) and 2% for family and friends to know whats going on with me (on a whole, pretty much 100% self-centered) still, i like it, so comment away friends and shower me with admiration and verbal applause (whats the point of beating around the bush about what this is really about *wink*).

Because I firmly believe that your life can never be too busy, Rachel and I whisked ourselves away from the valley for the weekend, meeting up with the Vineyard family in Evergreen for a much needed break from life as we know it. The drive was beautiful and we had a great time playing nertz, making creme brulee (Rachel has the picture of Jeff with his blow torch, not the culinary kind, the welding kind, finishing the final touches on the dessert), and running away from scary, huge pigs that roam about the house. I also got to clean stalls!!! and was very brave, chasing pigs with a broom, hanging out with the horses, who kept trying to tip and eat my wheelbarrow. silly horses. Other exciting highlights, Beau Jo's 'mountain pie' pizza, cute shops in evergreen, and Target. and a drive home that was breathtakingly beautiful (me: "Rachel, the camera, take another picture, wait look over there, oh my gosh, its so beautiful, wait, look at that" and so on)

so enough words, here are some pictures:

Thanksgiving came and went with such speed I can hardly believe that it is less than a week until December. It was a blur to say the least. The feast at the shelter went well, but my favorite part of the day was when most of the volunteers got together and watched Gery's Anatomy and Home Alone that evening, oh and we ate puppy chow (remember Dan, that sugery goodness in chex, chocolate, and peanut butter form, yummy!) Phew. Now we have a super busy three weeks of events, parties, fundraisers, and christmasness before the blessed event of my family returning to Colorado!! Hooray! (and I will be turning 23 on the 18th; there are many (5) December birthdays, so i am not sure if i will get to have a party all to myslef....hmmmm....I am thinking of having a scavenger hunt....)

Emmy, Rachel, and I faithfully (wo)man the office

What row of numbers comes next?
This is a tough one!
1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
13112221

For you, a riddle:


It's more powerful than God,
more evil than the devil,
poor people have it,
rich people need it,
and if you eat it you'll die.


what is it??

What Hero would you be:

I scored as El Zorro.



Zorro is the bane of the corrupt officials of Old California, a Spanish Robin Hood, a cavalier caballero who robs from the rich, gives to the poor, and always leaves his trademark "Z" behind as a reminder that when the people need him, he will always appear on his black stallion.

William Wallace 67%

El Zorro 67%

Captain Jack Sparrow 63%

Indiana Jones 63%

Neo, the "One" 63%

The Amazing Spider-Man 54%

Maximus 54%

Lara Croft 46%

James Bond, Agent 007 38%

Batman, the Dark Knight 38%

The Terminator 29%

www.quizfarm.com

Two funny little things:


1. A lady that I met at the benefit concert (the smallest little woman i have ever seen, tini tiny with a huge tall husband, both sweet sweet people) told me after the concert that she had something to bring me. So the other day, while at the office, she came in and handed me a little package. I opened it and it was a little statue of a girl playing the cello-she said she had had it forever and had been waiting until she knew someone who played the cello to give it to. Isn't that precious?!? Its now on my shelf.
2. I just met a man named Abe in the coffee shop who interrupted my writing to tell me his life story. Fascinating and also sweet, he owned a restaurant for 25 years and 3 months and had to sell it and now, he says, its going down the drains. But he had met Johnny Cash and June Carter, who came to town just for his restaurant and Johnny ate, sang with the juke box, and played pool. and Abe got his autograph. ah small towns!



New item: I am transitioning to a new job in La Puente, managing and leading work groups, i think it will be perfect for me and i am really excited. And I will be moving into a new house right next to the shelter, which should be interesting...