Friday, January 9, 2015

Holiday Break 2014 Recap!

Now that everyone I know thinks I'm about to jump off a bridge or something after my last post, I figured it would be good to follow up with something a little happier, shall we?

My holiday break was really nice and filled with lots of trips and meet ups with friends and loved ones throughout the Northeast.  I flew into Boston on the 20th to be able to attend my big sister's 30th birthday party!  Seeing her become a mother over the past few months has shown me that she is exactly where she is meant to be in life as she reaches this milestone year.  Seeing her being the best mommy to those two cute little peanuts, somehow everything just feels right.  My sister is 30 and she is a mom to twins and she is doing amazing at it all.


It was great to spend some time snuggling with those little peanuts in the morning too and I fall more in love with them every time I see them.  I then spent the next few days in Rhode Island, working and hanging out with my mom and getting ready for the big shibang of Christmas 2014.  Which, went off without a hitch per usual with lots of silliness, desserts, chaos, and bows.






Right after Christmas we celebrated "Christmas Surprise" with my friends at a local bar, which is now an annual tradition for us and it involved lots of shenanigans per usual.  And selfies.





For organizing this festival of fun, my friends so graciously gave me a bottle of champagne, which I devoured on New Years and absolutely loved.  If anyone else is interested in a game of "Christmas Surprise" please let me know and if you gift me champagne, I just might organize it for you.


The day after I headed back to my sister's for Christmas celebration round 2 with my dad, which had unseasonably warm weather and more selfies involved as well.







Duck face starts early on these days.


I also cannot get enough of these little faces.



The rest of the weekend and beginning of the week was spent hanging about, being lazy, before I head out to Albany to spend a couple nights with my friends there, including New Years Eve.  It was great to fit so much time with friends into a short period of time.  Dinner with one group.  Drinks with another.  Breakfast with some friends.  Lunch with more.  That sort of thing!  I even was able to catch some out-of-towners who were only around for 24 hours just like myself.


In fact, I'm rather impressed with just how many people I did get to see while I was in Albany, especially given that my New Year's Eve itself was spent doing a whole lot of this.


Yup, that's me, on the couch, in PJs, with a plate full of desserts and a dog wrapped up in a blanket just guzzling sipping some champagne.  There was also pizza.  And a blanket.  And some non-sparkly wine.  So, be jealous.

All in all, it was a really nice night staying with my friends who I lived with for a couple different times during my move last fall.  Even before I was moving, a favorite Friday night of mine would be to go to their house, drink wine, watch movies, and sleep over in the extra bedroom.  So New Year's wasn't anything special, but it was special.  They indulged my need to discuss the past year, talk about goals for the next year, and we speculated about where we'd be 10 New Year's Eves from now (which, was a scary exercise!)

In the morning I drove back East and met up with friends to jump in a car and head North for a ski weekend in Vermont!  The weekend was fun and my first time skiing in years, but I was impressed with myself with how I did.  There was lots of laughter, drinks, beautiful mountain views, food and shenanigans, which always makes for a good time.  I was with my friends E and James, whose wedding I was in this past summer, and Meag and her fiance Jon, whose wedding I have the honor of being in this coming summer!  The ski trip also included many of Meag & Jon's friends from Boston, so we were able to meet a lot of people who are important in their lives and will also be at the wedding in September!










I did mention there were shenanigans involved, right?  Lesson learned on this trip... for anyone who ever wants to take a casual group setting just hanging out up a MAJOR notch, try out a game of "Dodge Beer" and please be prepared for insanity and bruised elbows.







You've seen E and Meag on the blog a number of times before, as they are part of the group of 5 girls who we have been best friends since kindergarten.  Up until this past spring E was living in Boston, as Meag still does, so we were fortunate enough to get to see one another pretty often.  Now that we are all plane rides away again, it was really nice to spend some quality time not just with them, but with their significant others as well.  I've known these girls since we were little kids so to now be at the stage where we have husbands and fiances still blows my mind, but it means so much to me to have our family of friends expanding each year!  I cannot wait until September!!

On Sunday, we skiied a bit in the morning and then all shuttled back to Boston where E, James, and I caught our flights back home to our respective places.  I got back to my apartment late and barely pulled the wet clothes out of my suitcase before falling asleep.  It was a long and exhausting - mentally and physically - week prior but with a lot of goodness.

I hope that you had the chance to take a break this holiday season, see friends, loved ones, family or whomever is important to you.  I hope that you are as lucky as I am to have such wonderful people in your life who care for you, comfort you, make you laugh, and make you chug beers as fast as you can while ping ping balls are flying at you (see "Dodge Beer" above.)  Happy holidays from hungry twenties!

No comments:

Post a Comment