Oops!

When I saw I wrote a post on December 17, I assumed I wrote about our party. But it was just a link to us being elfed. That site is no longer available. Sorry if you missed it. And now I'll tell you about our party.

Everyone had a great time. The big problem is we were expecting 33 people and only 19 actually showed up. A few people contacted us to say they couldn't make it, and I'm fine with that. Things happen. But a number of people didn't call. That annoys me greatly. Don't RSVP and then not show.

The party was such a success that we've decided to make it an annual thing. We've already got plans for next year's do. We're trying to learn from this year's experience and make improvements. For instance, we're going to have it a week earlier. Yes, it puts it only nine days after Thanksgiving, but some people couldn't attend because of conflicting office parties. Chances are good we won't have that problem if we move our party up a week.

Another thing we're changing is the menu. We did finger foods this time, thinking it would be easier. The result was that Steve (bless his soul) spent over two hours cycling them through the oven! And I spent hours making 15 different types of cookies! The idea was that people would take the cookies home. Very few did. Even after Andrea happily took about half the cookies home with her, we still had dozens of cookies here. I've got three trays of untouched pan cookies in the freezer! So no finger foods or cookies next year. For one, I hope to be in grad school and I won't have the time. For another, I don't want Steve slaving over the stove for hours. So we've concocted a menu that should both impress and spare us too much work during the party. And the cost will probably be about the same as we spent this time.

In conclusion: Christmas in the Boonies was a rousing success.

Updates

Sorry for the lapse in writing. I've been vacillating between being really busy and really lazy. We had a very nice Christmas. The folks and Andrea came up here on Saturday the 22nd for a gift exchange. We spent Christmas Day at the folks'. We drove down and came back on the same day, which made for a lot of time in the car (especially when traffic on 95 came to a stop). But it was nice all the same. New Year's Eve was very quiet. Steve and I watched an X-Men movie marathon, pausing the DVD long enough to watch the ball drop at Times Square in New York.

Steve and I have never managed lazy very well. We're both more prone to want to do things, so I'm surprised we accomplished our goal of lazy and low key. The problem now for me is getting back to being active. Especially now that I'm job hunting.

In other, more exciting, news: We're going to England in April! Mum and Dad Ashton were planning to come here, but decided that they just didn't want to make the long, arduous flight. We were planning to spend Christmas 2008 in England, anyway, so Steve just combined the week's vacation he was going to take when the folks were here with the time at Christmas we planned to use and made a springtime England trip out of it. It's very exciting.

So that's about it from this neck of the woods. Steve's back at work. I'm hoping to find work soon. I've submitted all of my materials to the University of Florida's history grad school. Now it's just a matter of waiting for a decision.