Miss you family!

Someone commented on this photo in my facebook account, so I looked bakc at the photo and started reminising about Christmas day and my family. I decided I miss them today. [sniff]

No one likes change apparently

I spoke with my mother last night. She didn't like the new look to my blog, so I've reverted to my old one.

Matchmaking blog?!

At break (recess) today I went to show a friend of mine a picture on my blog and got this instead of my blog:

Apparently I am running a match-making site ... why am I the last one to find out these important things!

....as long as I'm running a matchmaking site ... anyone have any matches for me?

Catch up on my posts

Just to say to my regular blog readers - "scroll down, there are a few new posts down there." I hadn't finished a few posts (I needed to add the pictures) and then got behind. So read up - wouldn't want you to get behind!

For you non-regular blog readers - get with it! Read up!!!

***New posts****

17 Jan What a week
22 Jan Weekend Wonders

Thanks Cheryl

I think this necklace / bracelet is my favourite from Cheryl - I just hadn't found something to wear with it. I recently got a lime green shirt* so I now have something to wear with the necklace. Wahoo.

*So you can't see the shirt, I know - but I'm wearing it honest!

People who help me create mischief

Clarkey & me

Mary & Ed

These are just a couple pictures from our work's night out - waiting to get a copy of the other pictures from that night (cough cough Mary!)

Weekend wonders

Friday night was a celebration of a few different birthdays. Before going out, I went to the "local" for a "quick one" .. a quick one that lasted a couple hours. On my way home, I got stuck behind some sort of Muslim protest / march - an interesting experience ... mostly annoyance due to traffic jam.

After making myself look fabulous, it was into the city. I dropped my car off at a friend's house (as I was staying the night there - easier to get back to), and met up with friends. After a couple hours I suddenly got a splitting headache. It was incredible bizarre: literally one second I was on the dance floor, and the next second my head was in my hands in agony. I ended up outside for about 45 minutes where I was entertained by some drunk people from York before going back inside for a few more laughs. For the record - I was completely sober - THIS WAS NOT ALCOHOL INDUCED.

[picture missing]

What a week

My week started off good enough. This weekend I spent in my pajamas. Not once did I get out of them. I stayed in bed for 18 hours one night/day. Now that's how you get over jet lag. What a good weekend!

Monday was a bit of a nothing day. I remember I was busy at work and I didn't leave work until I was chucked out around 7:30pm. Tuesday was another busy day, but Tuesday night was fun. My friend, Mary came over after work for a girly night. We ended up watching a "chick flick". Just before it started, I tried to make the couch more comfortable

... this is Mary helping sort out the couch after I demolished it. opps.

Needles to say, we got more silly as the night progressed. Here, Mary's feeling a bit "puzzled"

Wednesday was a horrible horrible day! Oh man it was bad. I felt like someone at work set me up to fall and it really irritated me. I was frantically busy and everything seemed to be going wrong. Boo. After finally leaving work late Wednesday night, I went over to a friend's house. Oh what a good night of relaxing with a good melting pit of people. Thanks for having me over Ed.

Thursday was another busy day at work, and another late night leaving. I was meant to meet up with a friend from "up north" who was in London, but she fell asleep in her hotel room and we didn't end up seeing each other. As much as I would have loved to meet up with her, I was glad for a night in of doing nothing. It's been an exhausting fortnight for me.

Christmas, Episode 3

Andrew's visit: day's leading up to Christmas

Christmas in Paris

It's all about Madilyn

The people we see & the places we go

Christmas; Episode 2

Mom had too work so she had to stay behind in Paris. You could be sure that there would have been pictures of me walking up to my family when I arrived at the airport, getting my luggage off the carousel, loading up in the truck, going to Ikea*, getting lunch at Chipotle, and us in the truck on the way to Paris if my mother had come. She likes taking LOTS of pictures. I must admit this gets old very quickly - not necessarily all the pictures, but that she tries to get you to pose the picture, and if she misses you doing something she wants a picture of ....
...she has you do it again. This is Scott and my second hug (I'm laughing that Mom made us do it again for a picture)


I must say that as much flack as my mother gets about the pictures, it is nice to reminisce over all the pictures AND when she poses you in a picture, the pictures generally looks a lot better than if she didn't pose you. So thanks, Mom. Thanks for putting up with all the hassle and taking the photos.

The Gilbert's (that's my family) have a Christmas Eve tradition to drive around and look at Christmas lights and then come home and open one gift before we go to bed. This year we opened a gift before looking at lights. The gifts we opened doubled as our dinner that evening - MREs* from my grandfather** It was a fun gift and an interesting meal - not bad, but I'm not dying for my next one.

(Clockwise from top left) Me opening up my MRE - sloppy Joes; Madi fascinated with the MRE experience (Scott in the background); Karen, Scott, Madi and Cheryl inspecting what's in the MRE packets; Dad with his spag bol; Scott, Madi & Cheryl; Cheryl heating up her MRE

Notice Cheryl's overly cheesy smiles in the pictures above? I mentioned that my mother likes taking pictures. As Cheryl and Scott are around Mom more often than I am, it bothers them more than me. Last time I was around my family Cheryl and Scott had the habit of sticking their fingers in their noses - to mess up Mom's pictures. It appears Cheryl's moved on from "finger up her nose"look to "overly cheesey smile" look. Oh what fun :-)
After the MREs we went looking at lights. Cheryl was a good sport and got out in the cold at my request to take a picture.

Mom and Dad with Giant Santa; Cheryl and me, me with a giant wagon - everything's bigger and better in Texas!

*Meal Ready to Eat - a military food pack
**Mom's dad - he was a military man before retiring

Thank you!!!!

I'm very much enjoying all your comments. A lot of you I don't have email addresses for, otherwise I'd email and say thank you! When I log onto the Internet I inevitably come onto my blog to see if anyone has "left me some love" (ie commented). It's similar to the thrill and anticipation that I got as a child going out to see check my stocking to see if Santa had come. It's almost like Christmas morning everyday! So thank you for making my blog fun for me.

... hmmm, I wonder if that made sense.

Such a bad day

...oh how I wish I had stayed in bed today. Today has been hectic and chaotic and just overall not good. Looking on the bright side, as I always like to - my week's only going to get more hectic, chaotic and overall bad. [sigh]

Christmas episode 1

This is a long time coming, I know - but hey, I've been a very busy woman ... busy catching up on my sleep! The first 2 sets of pictures are my non-family pictures.

I mentioned I got stuck in Minneapolis because of snow:

"Instead of flying into Minneapolis, Minnesota, our flight was detoured to Fargo, South Dakota due to snow. So we sat on the runway for a few hours waiting for the runways in Minneapolis to be cleared, the plane to be refueled, and a new departure time to be set. We finally arrived in Minneapolis 5 hours late and I had missed all the connections to DFW (my final destination in Texas) so after standing in line for another 2-3 hours, I had a ticket booked for Monday morning to go to DFW. As I'd been awake and in transit for 22 hours, I wasn't up for airport sleeping; so I spoke to a few strangers and decided to book a hotel together to split the cost ... I started with sharing a hotel room with one stranger and in 30 minutes it had gone to 4 of us ... so I suggested getting 2 hotels. I stayed with a girl called Melissa who was absolutely ace. If we lived closer, I'm sure we would fast become good friends. I'm telling you, being stranded in an airport makes you bond with strangers! Melissa and I headed to the hotel where we ordered some pizza and made snow angels (after all, when life gives you lemons, you got to make lemonade...or snow angels..." Blog entry from 28 Dec

(click to enlarge - and view text on picture collage)

Jumping ahead a few days, on 2 January a friend I met at Camp Shamrock* this summer made the trek down from Oklahoma City to visit me while I was in Paris. Michelle and I were fast friends - bonding on such things as our mutual like for toilet humour and love of making fun of each other.

(click to enlarge - and view text on picture collage)

Michelle and I on the Eiffel Tower
My mom and I in front of the Eiffel Tower - Mom wasn't up for climbing it :-D

*Camp Shamrock is a summer camp in Northern Ireland I help at each summer.

So far this morning...

I've had a 40 minute phone conversation with my mom, I've cooked some rice and made / packed my lunch for today, I've undecorated my Christmas tree, taken my Christmas tree outside, taken my Christmas decorations down, tidied up the kitchen, gone through my mail from while I was away, watched half of a movie, written this post on my blog and it's only 20 past 6 in the morning!!!
I'm not a morning person. I often go to bed at 3:30am; I don't think I've ever woken up for the day at 3:30am unless I was going to catch a plane or such. Unfortunately it's now 6:20, about time to get up and ready for work, and I'm now getting sleepy. [sigh]
This jet lag thing is getting old. I arrived back in England Monday. I was in my flat and in the bath at just past 11am Monday, and not long after that I was asleep in the bath. Around noon I woke up and crawled out of the bath and into bed. Where I stayed until around10:30pm. I was then awake for the next 23 hours. 9pm was bed time for me on Tuesday night. I slept through the whole night (bar about 10 minutes around 3:30am), waking up for work around 6:45am. I was in bed at 10:30pm Wednesday night; again I woke up around 3:30, but couldn't get back to sleep. I watched tv for about an hour and then fell back asleep. I woke up around every 45 minutes until I gave up and got up for work around 6:30. Last night I was in bed for 10:30; a friend rang me at 11; I then slept until just after 3. After tossing and turning and trying to get back to sleep for a while, I decided I'd call my mother - what else do you do at 3:30 in the morning?

Very bad week

This is a pretty accurate picture for how I feel. What a stressful week I've come back to!! Briefly: we had a new server* put in, system was down for a day. Then we couldn't use the system. System was down for another day. Then there was something wrong with the data. The system was down this morning. What a nightmare! Ahhhh!

Remind me why I came back?

*Computer stuff

back in london

just a quick note to say I'm back in london. There were no exciting adventures on the way back. My blood-sugar did drop really low as we were landing in London, because we were landing I couldn't do anything which wasn't good. By the time we landed I was feeling really bad. I'm better now though. I also got stopped and questioned at customs. It made me a bit anxious when the guy stopped me; I always bring back some food stuff that I don't think I'm suppose to; so if they had searched me I probably would have gotten in trouble.
I'm blogging from my iPhone: and while it's cool and convenient that I'm blogging while in bed, its not overly easy to type long messages from a touch screen keyboard :-) so that's it for now.

Leaving on a jet plane...

...don't know when I'll be back again!

I leave Sunday morning from Paris at 9:30AM Texas time. I leave DFW (airport in Dallas) at 1PM. I leave Minneapolis at 7PM. Monday I arrive at Gatwick (London airport) at 9AM London time. I will hopefully be home by noon. That will be 21 hours in transit - door to door. Here's hoping for no delays. Keep me in your prayers

(I'm hoping that my plane will be slightly more sturdy than the one in my picture)

Fun in Paris ... not fun blogging

I've spent the last hour trying to get photos on my blog for you ... and I didn't succeed, so you're not getting them. Deal with it .... wow, how American do I sound?!

Today I went over to Rachael and Roselyn's house. After reading Roselyn the same book 3 times, she went for a nap and Racheal showed me some tips for photo editting and blog playing. Thanks Racheal!

This is the Spencer girls at play after nap time. Doesn't everyone want a mom like Racheal?!