Booyah Wins!!!

I have been playing fantasy football with my brother and his friends for like six or seven seasons. I have never won the entire thing until this year!!! I am the champion!

I did not think I had a chance because I was not so great in the regular season but I just barely made the playoffs and then the awesomeness of Booyah (my team's name) just kept on coming! I even had one of my major players not play this week and I still won. Where all this talent came from I am still unsure but I am quite proud.

It sure feels good to win especially when I get a little reward for it.

Christmas Traditions

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and a beautiful day of celebration and family. My Christmas day is a small, simple one but I am enjoying the slow day. In preparation for Christmas I have participated an many of my regular Christmas traditions. Here are a few of them.

Getting our Christmas tree. We used to cut them down at a farm but those days have past. As I always say, "it is the best Christmas tree ever!"

Spending time with life-long friends I do not get to see often enough.

Cookin' yummy food in the kitchen.

Playing Wii. This is a new tradition but it has become a regular activity of our holidays.

Hanging our Christmas cards. My mom has done this since before I can remember. She loves displaying her cards. Another point to note, it is warm enough in Houston to wear shorts. Or it was that day at least. Gotta love the first day of winter being 80+ degrees!

Starting the fireplace with the leaf blower. Something about the cold air being heavy and pushing the smoke into the house. I don't know but it happens every year and always makes me laugh. This is actually from today so thankfully it is a cool Christmas day here now.

Every holiday season has its traditions and it's peculiarities that are not expected but enjoyed. Here are a few new additions to my holidays.

Me hanging out with a huge metal rooster.

Searching for a cat around the house and finding her looking down on us. No this is not a new cat, we are cat sitting. Isn't she cute though!

Realizing that I am more like my family than I thought. We love our boat shoes. Mine are the ones on the bottom.

I hope you are enjoying your holidays, traditions and peculiarities both!

I Did It Again

I chopped 9 inches off my hair this week!!!!!!!!!

I know all of you are very interested in my Hair Chronicles so let me just tell you all about it.

The before shot

Four+ years ago I decided to brave the world of long hair. I grew it out for two years and then chopped off 10 inches to donate. You can read about the first time I did it here. I really enjoyed the whole process and grew to like my long hair so I decided to do it again.

As you can see from that post, that was May 2009 and now we are at December 2010. I probably could have let my hair grow out even longer but I wanted to get a good cut before I left for Chile so it was now or never.

Before from behind- look at those luscious locks :)

So I did it. I cut off 9 inches and it is short! I have had it this short in the past but not in a long time. I really like it but it does take some getting used to. I love how little time it takes to wash and dry it and how little mousse it takes to style it. I enjoy my short hair. I also enjoy the fact that now I don't have to get it cut again for quite a while.

So check out my new Christmas do!

The After shot

Adios hair

It Begins

Remember my birthday post in April? I got a surprise harmonica and I thought maybe I had found my calling. Well since then guess how much I have practiced.

NONE!

Well, none until today. Today my dad found an old harmonica book in some of his files and he gave it to me. My past excuse for not playing has been that I have been living with people and did not want to be disruptive. It was a legitimate excuse.

Now that I am at my parents house where my dad practices his guitar each day I think that excuse no longer works so I decided to give it a shot.

Did you know playing the harmonica is hard? I didn't! When I was a kid I used to blow on an old one we had and thought, "hmm, no big deal."

Wrong! It is quite hard and I am going to have to work on my technique a lot but I think it might be worth it. I kinda enjoyed sitting around, practicing an instrument. It has been a while and I am going to have to brush up on my music note reading skills.

F-A-C-E

Every Good Boy Does Fine

Sound familiar to anyone?

So I was practicing a little and attempting to get down covering certain holes with my tongue so that I could play one note at a time (not easy). I thought I was getting ok at playing Row Row Row Your Boat (gotta start somewhere) so I attempted to play it for my parents. I asked my mom what song I played and she said, "umm, Mary Had a Little Lamb?" Ohhh I was crushed! I guess Row Row Row needs a little more work.

I think I am up for the challenge. I might take a little hiatus again while in language school and living with a Chilean family (can you imagine their surprise) but once I have my own place I am going to rock out!

Hello Texas

I made it!! I am safely back in Texas and have been here a couple of days. My bags are finally unpacked and I have even started going through some of the many boxes crammed in my closet here. The Goodwill around here is very lucky. My dad has already taken TWO LOADS for me.

My sorting goes something like this.

I start off asking "Do I want to take this to Chile?" If the answer is yes yes, it goes in one pile.

If the answer is no this I ask "but do I want to get rid of it?"

If the answer is no, it goes in a box in my closet again.

If the answer is yes it goes to Goodwill!

It may not seem like a good system but it is working for me. I am already a few boxes less. Simple is the way to go people.

I love cleaning out my stuff. I mean yea the teddy bear I got for some unknown reason 10 years ago is cute but wouldn't it have a better life with some poor child than gathering dust in my room. Yes!

On another note, the travel to get back to Texas to go through all my stuff was great. I won't bore you with the details but here are a few pics to tell the story. St. Louis was a lot of fun and our time was filled with eating, watching football, playing games, playing wiibuilding fires and visiting the arch. Good times.

Building Fires

Playing Wii- showing our dancing skills

At the Arch

Pod to go up in the Arch

Beautiful at night