easter, birthdays, and dusting off the cobwebs.

Why, hello there... it has been quite a long time now, hasn't it? I am happy to be with you again today. Today is a special day. Along with being a day of celebration, a day of forgiveness and thankfulness and joy for many people around the world, it is also my mother's birthday and the fourth anniversary of my having started this blog. Douglas and I spent this beautiful day doing wonderful things with wonderful people... we started the morning off with a little bit of scrambling (I am a perfectionist, after all) and a few tears (I have to constantly remind myself that perfection is not attainable) but everything worked out, as it always does. Doug and I caught a nice sermon at church and followed it up with a family brunch at the apartment. With my pretty new pink glasses filled with bright, bubbly prosecco, some lovely spring flowers, and my "famous" potato salad, I was in hostess heaven. We followed up the nice visit from my family with an early Easter dinner with our dear friends Danielle and Jason. After a long nap we are still filled to the brim with food and slowly transitioning back into school mode. 

If you have not noticed by the long bouts of silence, this year is crrrrrazzzzyyyy! It is flying by and Douglas and I have so many exciting, overwhelming things in the mix. Weekends filled with classes, school field trips, interviews, frisbee matches, weddings. Oh, hello, life - did you have plans for me?! My tenure year is every bit the overachieving, long-houred, beautiful mess that I expected it to be, and Douglas is busy with internship applications and senior projects. I am happy to have a small break next week and the opportunity to visit two of my favorite girls, Carolina and Kim, in my beloved Boston. I have been filling most of my free time with reading, something that I cannot get enough of right now, so I apologize for the silence. April is expected to be even more swamped, as I start preparing for an upcoming festival that we are planning for one of the clubs I run at school with after-school rehearsals every day of the week. I promise I will try to fill you in during my free moments. So many wonderful things are going on it is hard to breathe!

glimpses.

Happy new year, everyone! For those of you who do not know, I have been quite sick lately and spent the bulk of my holiday vacation in bed... No exciting Christmas adventures or glamorous New Year's Eve parties for Douglas or I. No, these were a pretty miserable last few weeks, but I am hoping I just had to get all the "bad" out before the new year arrived. Now I am back at work and trying to recover. Christmas came and went in a blur, we spent half the holiday with my family and the other half with Doug's. The day after Christmas we enjoyed a nice little game night with Doug's friend, Katie, and on the way home that evening I was stricken with fever and chills and that was that for pretty much the rest of my vacation. We did go see the Hobbit, though, which was quite fun.

I have been taking a teacher course on East Asian history at Princeton University with my friend, Alison, and got to enjoy some yummy coffee from the shop where Douglas and I first met. Doug and I also got a chance to visit my mother's grave recently. I am not a big fan of going to the cemetery, but I like to get out to her gravesite a couple times a year. It's really a very pretty stone, in my opinion. Some homemade peppermint bark for a new friend. A beautiful bouquet Douglas surprised me with, just because (he is the best). A little felt bear getting ready to go onto a newly-made Christmas stocking. How was your holiday?

what the dickens?!

Let the Christmas festivities begin! This weekend, amidst the chaos and routine of my usual school work, I had the pleasure of enjoying some amazing holiday activities with some of the very best people on earth. I have not had the chance to go on any "adventures" as of late, with all of the tenure-year responsibilities and tutoring. I have been crunched for money and am spending every extra minute I can get trying to earn some much-needed cash for the holidays, while Douglas is busy cramming for finals. When my cousin told me about the Christmas "Dickens Festival" being held in my beloved old home, Narberth, I refused to pass up the opportunity to participate in some holiday cheer... even if it meant I would be paying for it later. My Saturday kicked off with a trip to green eggs café in Philadelphia for some delicious breakfast with my beautiful friend, Theresa. I enjoyed some tasty salmon eggs benedict, which literally left me satisfied the entire day, and Theresa ate a decadent plate of crème brûlée french toast. Crème brûlée is my favorite dessert so, being the sweetheart she is, of course she let me sample some. Om nom nom!! Everything was so good.

After we stuffed ourselves silly and caught up over coffee, she was off to a bridesmaids' fitting for her wedding while I headed to the quaint little village of Narberth, my grad-school stomping grounds, to meet up with my cousin, Robert. Every year, Narberth holds a Charles Dickens festival, where the whole downtown area is transformed into a scene from A Christmas Carol. It is really magical! The town hires actors to portray different characters, whom the children can hunt down as part of a scavenger hunt. Local bars sell hot toddies and churches give out free home-baked goodies. It was so lovely to walk the streets of my old home, visit my cousin and his wonderful wife, and scope out the festivities. My only disappointment was that Douglas could not make it. I cannot wait to bring him next year!

My family has been gearing up for our annual holiday traditions - decorating the tree, listening to my mother's favorite Christmas music, and last minute holiday shopping. By "gearing up," I mean that I am sending them constant reminders about all of the things I have planned for them to do :) I love this time of year. What does your family do during the holiday season?

bittersweet.

The Christmas season is by far one of my favorite times of year, though it hardly comes easily. As many of you may know, my mother passed away one week before Christmas and the holidays are always slightly tainted by her absence. I do not think this is something that will ever go away but it is something I am learning to cope with, little by little. It is this time of year that I remember the snowy ride on the Chinatown bus from Boston to New York, not knowing what I was coming home to. I remember making plans to decorate her room at Greenwich hospital to try to bring some holiday cheer to her suffering, and not getting a chance to see those plans through because she was gone less than 36 hours after my arrival. I remember watching her pass away in pain and tears and fear, rather than in courage and peace and dignity, like everyone likes to pretend. Those memories are hard... but I am not someone to deny myself a good cry, so I let them come. And cry I do. And then I remember my mother dancing around the living room to "One Swinging Christmas." I remember her coming home late on Christmas Eve after working with her friend Heather only to stay up until ungodly hours wrapping presents at the last minute. I remember her signing us up to do a family rendition of "Away in a Manger" at church, much to my father and sister's chagrin, and fighting back laughter at how awful we sounded. I remember her in her long white nightgown, her sleepy voice oohing and ahhing as I opened my presents as a toddler, my dad nearby with the camcorder. I remember the voluptuous, slightly inappropriate snow-ladies she used to make in our front lawn. I remember the good things: the funny things, the heartwarming things, the things that were just her.

I will miss you this Christmas, as I have every year since you left us, and will for the rest of my life. But thank you for always reminding me of the "reason for the season," as you used to say. Thank you for bringing warmth into our home every winter. Thank you for being my mother.

Such a cutie. We miss you, Mumma. Happy Christmas.