Let's Review.....

So 2 months without a post... amazing how time gets away from you.... while it's no excuse, I swear it has more to do with being busy than being lazy. I'll take this post to review what I've been up to the last couple months, and then hopefully I'll add some random posts about things that have happened, you can read them all or pick and choose... it's up to you.

So after turkey day....

I left early Fri morning to fly across the country and crash the Thanksgiving weekend celebration at home. If you don't know, Thanksgiving in my family is not just a meal, or just a day, it's a 3-4 day event with 30+ people. My aunt, uncle and cousins picked me up at the airport (Dad, the only other one who knew I was coming, was too busy at the Civil War game. He would've been forgiven had my ducks won, but alas...), they drove me home where, who should mom find on her front porch but her favorite daughter! Yes, she cried! It was great to surprise her and the WHOLE family, but even better to spend a few days enjoying their company, chatting, doing puzzles, playing games, sleeping and eating way too much!

After some much needed time at home it was down to San Francisco where I met up with several others from my agency for the Huether Conference (a Lasallian conference). Casey and I were also able to spend one day on campus to see former profs, my old office and some really good friends. It was very surreal to be back at SMC, I think I finally had that "oh, I graduated..." moment. Very weird.

The conference was very good, some really impressive speakers who opened up great conversations on women in the ministry, diversity, vocation and so on. We also had a great conversation with LVs, alums and friends about mixed community lives, the future, the benefits, etc. If you want to see some highlights you can visit: http://lasallianvolunteers.org/news_1206_sfmission.asp
There's even a couple of (almost accurate) quotes from yours truly.

That brought us into December...tho I barely remember the month. Christmas really seemed to just sneak up and run past this year. The second weekend in Dec we took a day to attend a very fancy banquet and ceremony to honor Br. John Norton. He's a brother who works for Tides as well as another Lasallian agency. He's in his 80's and still practicing family law!

The weekend after we headed to NYC and met up with other LV's and friends. We got to see all the Christmas decorations, including the Rockefeller tree, the Macy's windows (on Saturday, in Macy's they had three people directing traffic on and off the escalator because the crowds were so huge), the Rockette's Christmas show, did some Christmas shopping and had another great time in the city!!!

After a busy week back here, with a Christmas party for our clients and families, office Christmas party, community Christmas dinner and taking clients to see Polar Express on IMAX, it was back across the country to spend Christmas at home. It was just where I needed to be, and again some much needed relaxation and time to catch up with friends and fam. I even went running with mom and hunting with dad... can't say I don't love those parents!

I returned to RI the Fri following Christmas, spent Sat doing laundry and such, then on Sun Casey and I picked up an SMC friend from the airport and headed straight to NYC (again). Please note that Sun was Dec 31... yep, New Year in NYC! We had dinner and shopping with Casey's sister before heading to Time Square... or as close as we could get. We ended up getting to 53rd (the square is at 42nd), but it took running through crowds, jumping barriers, being shoved through the tiny little barrier openings, pushing, shoving and jostling the crowds to get that far...but hey, we saw the count down and the ball drop! We also made some new friends with whom we headed down to the village to start 2007. And while I can't share all the details of what happened in-between, let's just say we saw the sunrise from the backdeck of a sick mid-town Manhattan apartment (an apartment with a huge flatscreen, back deck, hot tub... in Manhattan??? Yes.). That's all I have to say about that. ;o)

The weekend after we took our SMC friend down to Long Island where she is spending Jan-term doing service work. It's a bit like the LVs, but it's one month instead of one year. We hung out with fellow LV's down there and catch up a bit.

Also I must mention that in the middle of the following week we got to see Wicked in Providence, it was wicked good!!!!

And this past weekend we headed to upstate NY for our mid-year LV retreat. Nearly all of the LVs from across the nation gathered at a massive retreat house for some relaxation, reflection and fellowship. It was really great to catch up with everyone and have some guided reflection time. And 30+ of our crew headed to the Bronx for the last night, crashing the ever welcoming Bedford Park community, it took 4 or 5 of us to pull together a last-minute meal for that many people, but we were well fed before we went downtown where we virtually took over one of the bars! What can I say, LVs ROCK!

And that brings us to this weekend which has been full of cleaning, laundry, TV watching, book reading, sleeping, an unfortunate migraine, a massive grocery store run, and finally some blogging!!!! It's finally time to slow down for a while! Tonight, a fierce game of high, low, jack!