May Your Days Be Merry and Bright

Tomorrow Stephen and I drive to Milwaukee to fly to Fort Myers (and then drive to Sanibel) to spend time with his family for Christmas! As always, we have quite a few things to wrap up (including presents) before our holiday travels begin.

First and foremost: tonight we drop Tywin off at a friend's apartment! That's right, my little boy is spending the holidays with another family *sniff*sniff* But seriously, we are so grateful my friend Melissa and her husband agreed to watch him. You know what they say, it takes a village :) Fingers crossed he is a well-behaved kitten, as we've raised him to be.  I only hope their lamps don't have any dangly switches, because he's taken to knocking ours over lately. May they accept my early apology for the potential desolation of their Christmas tree.

photo by Stephen that captures his inner essence

From Sanibel, I'm flying to the 'burgh (HOW ABOUT THEM STEELERS? Playoffs, baby.) to hang with my fam and go to a wedding on Saturday (yay!) and then I'm back in Madison for the New Year. New Year's Eve can get a lot of hype with crazy parties and anticipated midnight kisses, but it is our five-year anniversary (of dating) so Stephen and I will likely do a relatively low-key date night. I can't believe it's been five years! More importantly, the new year will also mark the 4-year anniversary of this blog! (kidding about the more importantly!!) (but it really has been 4 years.) I'm very thankful for everyone who's been reading rejoyce from the very beginning - and for new readers too! I've been doing a lot of thinking about what the ideal direction of this blog is, and I hope 2015 brings nothing but improvements :)

I am not sure how much I'll be blogging over the "holiday break" because I will probably be too busy stuffing my face with pie and whatnot. But I will likely be instagramming throughout (I can never resist a pie pic) - so feel free to follow along! Wishing everyone a wonderful and relaxed end to 2014 - and an amazing start to 2015! :) 

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p.s.  I really enjoyed this A Cup of Jo post on being single over the holidays - which refers to NYE as "the most dreaded of holidays." Even though I'm in a relationship, I can totally see where she's coming from. NYE = way too much hype.

p.p.s. I forgot how much I love business books! I just started reading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and I can't put it down.

p.p.p.s. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!