Stay-cation

With where the holidays fell this year combined with my off days (every Friday) I decided to take a bit of vacation.  I used 40 hours and was off work for 8 work days in a row... (Dec 25-Jan 6)  Then we got a crazy blizzard that pretty much closed St. Louis.  I was able to telework that week.  I ended up going to the office for a couple of hours on January 9th only to be sent back home... since I also teleworked on December 23rd and 24th... which means I was pretty much away from the office from December 19-January 13.  Man looking at it spelled out that way that's almost a month!

So what did I do with all that time off?  Well, at the time it didn't feel that long, but looking back it's like what did I do?!? 

Well, Daniel was off work, so there was a fair amount of time spent with him.  I managed to do some exciting things like clean out my closet and organize the bathroom closet...

I also hung out with my Dad and brother... we went to Final Cut Steak House at Hollywood Casino.  It was so delicious (and I'm not even a steak fan!)  Afterwards we hung out in the casino until nearly 1am!  It was fun hanging out with the two of them!

My mom's travel buddy, Joe, was also in town for awhile.  We had a game night with him where we ordered Imos pizza and played game.  I love playing board games!!  It was a really fun night.

We also decided to have an impromptu New Years Eve party.  I made WAY too much food including bacon wrapped smokies, spinach artichoke dip, monkey bread, chocolate chip cookie dough dip, and rye bread pizzas (why do I feel like I'm missing something?).  Kyle made chili cheese dip and Dan grilled some pork steaks.  So much food and it was so delicious! 

NYE was a lot of fun, we had Kyle, Michelle, Liz and Ken over.  We toasted champagne at midnight and shot off some fireworks.  We played Cards Against Humanity.  It was the perfect night in my opinion.

What else? What else?  I worked on my cross-stitch a bunch.  I thought it might be fun to show these two pictures (so pictures right?)  This depicts how much I can get done in one hour.

Beginning

One Hour Later

Not that big of a difference huh?!?

I also watched some of Weeds on Netflix, I'm up to season six I believe.  Also watched way too many Law and Order SVU episodes.

We hung out with Kyle a few times including going to a Mexican dinner with him and a couple of his friends - a lot fun.

The negative part was I did have a bit of a cold this week... sadly it's still a bit with me... but a lot of people got a stomach bug so I'll take my pesky cold over there.  Speaking of - I'm hardly ever sick... so when something silly like a cold happens I'm just a big baby about it.

I had to deal with the DMV.  I had a bit of trouble getting my car inspected.  Turns out it was leaking fuel.  Luckily for me it was covered under a recall.  So I finally sat down to get the new stickers and they couldn't verify my insurance information online womp womp.  So I went to the DMV on the last day of the year (totally smart call wouldn't you say?)  It ended up being just fine, but geez, I was worried there for a minute when I had been standing there 5 minutes and the line had not moved AT ALL. 

Hmm... what else what else?  Honestly, I was a bit like a kid, I stayed up way late and slept in late too... it was awesome!  Overall I think I was pretty lazy, but it was great to be off that long!!  It was like a school-aged kid's winter break... or what teachers get... all for 40 hours of annual leave.

Given by the end Dan and I had spent about 3 weeks non-stop together - so it was really nice to come back to work.