Merry Christmakkuh!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! I hope you all had delightful holidays and are closing out the year in style.

After getting Hanukkah started in style with an iTouch for Alex, we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with Mom and Dad. We had a full house Christmas Eve with siblings, nieces, in-laws, grandparents, friends of the family, and Godchildren! It was a Christmas Eve Texas style, with award-winning ribs, tamales and queso, and the always delicious olivye. We got in a lot of great family time, though it just never seems like quite enough. Santa was good to us this year--new tennis rackets to feed our growing addiction!

All else is well here in P-ville. Alex is constantly working to get two reports published on time. While it looks like the Brazil trip is on indefinite hold, Japan has now surfaced as a potential destination in 2009! I have signed up for my next Team In Training event: a century ride (100 miles) around Lake Tahoe in June. It's called "America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride" and I can't wait!

May all your days be merry and bright,

K.

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

I realize I'm running about one holiday behind schedule, but here's my softball crew at our Halloween game. Yes, I am riding an ostrich. Enjoy!

#50: create photo book of trip to Ireland/London

Thank you, Oprah!

A friend sent me a code for a free photo book for all Oprah fans from Snapfish. While I ended up going way over the standard 20 pages, the $30 credit sure did come in handy! It was fun to look through all our pictures again and remember just how amazing that trip really was. I can't wait to get the book!

If you have a snapfish account, you can view the book here.

Now to make our China one!

Nice Catch--#39!

As my cousin pointed out to me today, the Thriller event definitely counts as going dancing with my husband! It wasn't exactly what I had in mind for that task, but I guess that's part of the beauty of our relationship: while it's not always what I expect, it's always fun and different!

We Voted (#88)

Because Alex's voter registration didn't kick in until after early voting had closed, we had to wait until the day of to cast our ballots in the election. We arrived at our polling place--the elementary school by our house--at 7 a.m. sharp, and after waiting in line about 30 minutes, signed in and dialed in our votes!

We watched all the debates, and all the Saturday Night Live skits, so we felt like we were well informed on the issues at hand. (I even researched the different propositions that were up for voting, only to realize in the booth that they were all Austin propositions and weren't on the ballot in Pflugerville. Oh well!)

I was so excited for Alex--from Little Communist to active participant in the Democratic process! Although now he feels like he's personally vested in the outcome and will be so mad if his guy doesn't win!

I hope you all took part. What a great day to be an American. :-)

Medical Bills...Done and Done! (#67)

It's true. Thanks to a sweet deal Alex worked out with his company, all of my medical bills are officially paid off! I can't believe it!! Just one more reason to add to the million why we love love love Alex's job.

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween!

We are World Record Holders!! (twice!!)

The Thrill the World event was yesterday. Officially, 881 Austinites danced the Thriller dance together, the single largest group to ever dance Thriller (previous record was 147)!! That's world record #1. We also broke the previous record for most people at multiple locations dancing Thriller at the same time; previous record was 1,722, and yesterday we had 3,960 zombies in 65 different cities in 9 countries around the world!!

Here is a shot of our breathtaking dance venue--as you can see, the day was beautiful!
Since this was all for the Guinness Book, they were very strict on the rules. No non-dancers could be in the camera shot, so our videographer (Alex's brother) couldn't stand near us to capture us on film. Sorry!! The video of me learning the dance will have to suffice, along with this one of that gives you a feel for the whole crowd and dance!


Thrill the World Austin from Blueberry on Vimeo.

Here's the official website for the Austin group if you're interested in more videos, pictures, new stories, stats, etc.

And, at the end of the day, here are two zombies who left their zombie garb at home but had a great time breaking two world records!