Hello internet friends! It’s been a while and there is much to post.
Michael turned 31! Woot!! Since we’re still pretty new here in South Dakota and are in the friend-making stage of things, I did my best to be a birthday party all by myself. Michael wasn’t nearly as into it as I was, but we had lots of fun and I made some Funfetti cookies that pretty much rocked our faces off. I received a top-secret mission-impossible-style phone call from his mom shortly before the big day to pick up a special gift from the place Michael most dearly loves. Here he is with the result of the quest. Gift cards are starting to become really cool!
The rest was basically replacing things that were worn out – a new watch and shoes. Does that make us old? The shoes definitely had to go though. Michael’s been loyal to the same style of Payless shoes for over 5 years and wears them every day. I call them his dress tennis shoes. I don’t know what we’ll do when Payless stops making them! I think Riley’s nose appreciates the change of shoes just as much as Michael does.
We were in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and really enjoyed spending time with my side of the family. Riley got to burn about a million calories (at least) by chasing the other two dogs around, we decorated my parents’ tree, and Stephen and I taught our brother Jonathan our secret handshake.
At the end of our Thanksgiving dinner, my mom surprised Michael for his birthday with an ambush of Canadian pride. She had Canadian flags, pins and trivia, all enjoyed with our pumpkin pie.
Michael is the only Canadian in the family, so it was cool to see everyone learn and have fun! It was a great goofy time and we took a family photo on our American holiday showing our Canadian pride.
And on to the most important part of Thanksgiving weekend – Black Friday. As known in our family as “Stuff Day.” Our mottos are “I don’t need it, but I can’t pass it up.” And the always popular, “The more you spend, the more you save!!” Here we see Jon and Erin pouring over the ads on Thanksgiving, also known as Stuff Day Eve.
Stuff Day has become a tradition for my brothers Jonathan and Stephen, sister-in-law Erin, Michael and I… and anyone ridiculous enough to come with us. We’re only there partly for the good deals. The true spirit of Stuff Day is about all the wacky adventures and people you can meet by getting up to stand in line at 4:30 in the morning in the 20 degree darkness.
And yes, we did in fact make Stuff Day shirts.
14 hours and 2 naps later, we visited Corey and Sarah Moore that night. We don’t have any photo evidence of that blessed event, but we DO have photos from the scene of the crime we committed on the way there.
The spool of Riley’s doggie pick-up bags ran out right when we arrived at my parents house. The horror! So in the cloak of darkness we snuck up to the pole of doggie poo bags at our old apartment and made off with a long emerald strip. Shhh!
Do you see the image on those bags? Check out this enhancement. Best poo bags ever.
In other seasonal news, the women’s barbershop chorus that I sing with has been performing Christmas concerts at several retirement and nursing homes all month. Most of the gals are 60-80+ years old and are so awesome. I’ve really loved this community of caring and music-loving women. Michael video taped one of our concerts and unintentionally got a lot of attention. I received several comments afterwards about how handsome he is.
Here are two songs Michael recorded that night. The first is a fun non-Christmas barbershop song called “Sunny Side Up.”
The second is a short song called “CHRISTmas.” The high tenor part that I sing is especially pretty, so this has become my favorite song of the program. Plus it’s short!
Our first concert however was in the bra section of the Yonkers department store in the mall, which was quite a sight to be seen. We were crammed as tight as we could fit into a corner of a walkway intersection under a hanging sign of a bra lady — which we were remarkably able to tilt for a band-shell effect. It’s too bad Michael chose to be at the Coldplay concert in Minneapolis instead, because he really missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime music experience. 😉 The concert seemed kind of random and we drew an interesting crowd of bewildered shoppers. HUGE thank you to Pastor Adam, Becky and little Hudson Weber for coming out to hear us sing. It meant a lot to have some friendly support and be able to share the adventure. Plus it was pretty awesome to see Hudson zoom around pulling underwear off the shelves.
We put our Christmas tree together a few days ago and things are feeling very cozy in our new home, despite all the snow. Shoveling the seemingly endless sidewalk for our corner-lot rental house doesn’t necessarily fill a person with Christmas spirit, but man do we love living in this house. Especially Riley.
In other news, I chopped off almost all of my hair on Tuesday. It was getting pretty frumpy and I wanted a solid, crisp look for my continuing interviews. Thanks to my Facebook friends for humoring my dorkiness with your feedback!
Here’s my inspiration:
I found a coupon for a local beauty school that gives a free haircut if you get your hair colored. The whole thing ended up being about $25 including tip! That’s about a third what a cut and color usually costs in a nice salon. I printed out the Mandy Moore photo and sat for what ended up being over 3 hours with Ricky, an amazing woman and aspiring hair stylist from the Philippines. 3 hours is a very long time for a cut and color, but Ricky was great. After getting over a brief “I look like a boy” moment, I’m really starting to dig the new look.
Before and after:
So there you have it!
Next up: Celine Dion concert in Minneapolis next week (waaah!!), Michael’s sister Serena is coming to visit for Christmas (hooray!), and who knows what else is over the horizon. I expect to secure a solid job very soon and continue to grow my Arbonne business. But the one thing we can always count on is Michael wearing those Payless shoes.