'Tis the season

I've abandoned the blog lately.

It seems that before vacation I was too busy and/or sick to do much of anything.

Now that I'm vacation, I'm enjoying not doing much of anything.

I caught one nasty cold from my students that cast a nice shadow over the usually exciting week before Christmas break (minus the fun afternoon of decorating cookies with the kids, Chris, and my parents... despite feeling terrible, it was a blast and may just become a holiday tradition in my classroom).  

Normally Chris has an immune system made of steal, but it seems this time the germs found a crack in his armor.  Poor guy has been sick and feeling bad since last Saturday when we drove 13 hours to St. Louis.  Since he wasn't feeling well, I drove about 2/3 of the trip.  Luckily we had great weather -- minus it being REALLY freaking cold and windy in Kansas.

Since then we have been lounging around in St. Louis, eating and generally doing a bunch of nothing.  Our bikes are here, but the frigid weather has kept me off of mine, and The Sickness has kept poor Chris off of his.  We climbed Monday night with an old friend of Chris's and his parents.  The gym was nice, but really makes me appreciate our climbing gyms in Denver.  There were only a few easy routes and it was pretty packed.  Mom2 and Dad2 did awesome for their first time climbing though!  Both muscled it up a 5.7 and learned that climbing isn't as scary as it seems.  

Yesterday we braved the mall for a few last minute gifts.  I realize that as I've gotten older, I've started to hate crowds.  They overwhelm me.  More and more, I see that I am much better adapted to the solitude of a climb, hike, or ride than I am to crowds.  Maybe it's also because I deal with a large crowd of children everyday and I need some "personal space bubble" rebuilding time on my time off?  Who knows.  Either way, I'm looking forward to using the other part of my Christmas gift from my parents and spend my gift card on some new boots in the post-Christmas sale frenzy! 

I absolutely cannot wait to give Chris his gift tomorrow.  The gift has been in the works for many many months and I'm very bad at delaying gratification.  A shipping snafu nearly killed the surprise, so things didn't work out as planned, but I'm still excited.  Perhaps he'll find the gift blog worthy tomorrow, otherwise I'll post pictures tomorrow for him.  

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!!!!!

Merry Christmahannakwanzikah to everyone! (still one of the best holiday ads of all time)