…starting January 6th. So I’m a little late with this. What’s new. Any of you who really know me shouldn’t have expected anything different. So here it is: I’m going to blog EVERY day in 2009 (except for January 1-5, which has already passed me by…*sigh*). I get just as tired as you guys do of seeing the same blog post up for days or even weeks on end. I don’t know what I’ll have to talk about each day, but I’m promising there’ll be something, assuming I’m not prevented from doing so by injury, natural disaster, act of God, or outage of Cox cable. If so, I will report my excus…ahem…understandable reason for my silence as soon as possible. So there you go. Hold me accountable. This should be fun.

This Christmas for me was apparently the Christmas of kitchen stuff, and I’m not one of those women who gets offended by gifts of that sort. At all. I love it, in fact. So now I present to you yet another new appliance in my kitchen, just lurking around beside the microwave.

Go ahead and just imagine the aroma of homemade bread filling your nostrils as you read this. Because it’s filling mine as I type this. I knew that I wanted a bread maker, and I knew it would be wonderful, but I was not prepared for just how amazing this thing is. I feel like I have hired a baker to just hang out in my kitchen and make me bread whenever I want it. I wanted it this morning. Whole wheat bread, to be exact.

The instructions said dump the ingredients in the bread maker, close the lid, turn it on, walk away. Come back in about 2 hours to perfectly finished, homemade bread. Seriously? No mixing? No kneading? No nothing? It’s true. I tried it this morning. Dumped in the ingredients and went about my business. Somewhere around 10 a.m. it beeped at me as if to say, “Here you are, Diana. Here’s your fresh, homemade, whole-wheat bread. Enjoy.” You have to understand how much I love bread to truly appreciate just how wonderful this new addition to my kitchen is. I think that along with “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (see Matthew 4:4) I really could live on bread alone.

Granted, it didn’t slice it for me, but it did everything else. I could definitely get used this.

…and they made me think I was going to get a plain white one. Although I got several very nice Christmas presents (as did Jake…our home theatre is now complete…or at least it better be), this is, in my opinion, the prettiest one. I’ve wanted one of these things for a while now, but just couldn’t bring myself to spend the money. My parents said they had found refurbished ones for pretty cheap, but you could only get them in white. So I had made up my mind that instead of the green-apple beauty I had longed for, I would just have to accept a white one. I mean, they do the same thing, right? What does the color matter? Oh, but it does matter…

Well, Christmas morning comes, and my parents prove once again that I really am spoiled. There it was in all it’s green-apple glory. I love it! Now I just need some counter space on which to use it.

Oh, and on a side note, these pictures were taken with my NEW camera that I’m super excited about. I’m selling the old one with 3 lenses, 2 SD cards, and some other odds and ends. If any of you are interested, just leave a comment, and I’ll email you the specs.

I just want you to know that Rich was SO serious about having these pictures taken.  He cooperated with everything I asked him to do, always had the perfect smile on his face, and never did anything that would cause their pictures to be even slightly less than perfect.  Observe:

I love that last one. It appears that Jennie is seriously considering walking away right at that moment.

Jake’s probably going to turn a little red when he realizes I’ve posted this story for all to read. Or maybe a lot red. But it’s just too funny not to share. Let me set the scene for you: It’s about 7:00 Monday evening, and I’m sitting at the dining room table rolling little balls of cookie dough in sugar and placing them on a baking sheet, thus my hands are messy. Jake is in the next room sitting at the computer with very clean hands. My phone is laying on the computer desk. I hear the “text received” noise, and I ask Jake to read it aloud to me. It’s from a friend (who will remain unnamed) who wants to see us while we’re home for Christmas. So we proceed with me dictating and Jake typing the texts, all from my phone, so my friend just assumes it’s me the whole time. This is where I messed up. Jake is not the best speller, but even worse, he’s a quick-typing, non-proofreading texter. This can lead to disastrous (if not hilarious) results…

Me: Ask her if they’re free on Tuesday.
Pause.
Little text noise.
Jake: She says yeah, they’re free.
Me: Ask her where they want to meet.
Pause.
Little text noise.
Jake: (confused voice, reading her text) “Don’t be so forward”?
Me: WHAT did you type?!
Jake: (defensively) I asked her where she wanted to meet!
Me: But what did you TYPE?!
Jake: Hang on, let me look.
Jake starts laughing hysterically and uncontrollably.
Me: WHAT DID YOU TYPE?!?!

Jake can barely stop laughing to speak, so he makes his way into the dining room, bent over with laughter, and shows me the phone displaying his sent message:

“Where do you want me?”

Good grief, Jake. Learn to proofread! I called her immediately, explained the details of what had just taken place, and we laughed even more.  So funny.

You know the rest. I’ve been waiting for these two to get engaged for months now. Once they finally did, I couldn’t WAIT to take engagement pictures. You should go over to Jennie’s blog to read about the proposal, and also about why her hair looks so fabulous in all these pictures. I think these have to be my favorites so far…but maybe I’m just a little biased. I had a really hard time narrowing down my favorites, so there are more photos posted here than usual. There are a few more on my flickr page as well. Tell me what you think:

I think everyone who lives in areas that don’t receive much snow (say, New Orleans, for example) has one thing on their mind when they see the snow start falling…let’s make a snowman! Evidence of this was found all over campus at NOBTS. I think I counted about 10 different snowmen as we drove around, and we didn’t even go to all of the prime snowman hangouts. I noticed that snowmen have personalities as unique as people. Take this guy, for example…

He seems like a pretty slick, stylish kind of guy. He’s got the scarf and the hat going on, and judging by those carved out curves, I’d say he works out.
Then there’s this guy…

A little more rough around the edges, but he looks like a hard working fella. Not so hard working, though, that he never has time for fun. Look, he’s got on some Mardi Gras beads. He’s just a good ole, hard workin, fun lovin Louisiana guy. And then we have this character…

I have to admit, I’m concerned.

But you know it’s not all fun and games around here for snowmen. The mortality rate for snowmen in New Orleans is through the roof. Even today, the carnage was already beginning to pile up. This is not something for children, so if they’re looking over your shoulder right now (Dave…), you might want to cover their eyes, or send them out of the room, or something. It’s bad. I’m telling you.

Grotesque, isn’t it? I warned you.

Today was that day.  And when I say it snowed, I mean it came down heavy for a solid 2 and a half hours.  It was so beautiful!  Grown men and women were acting like children: throwing snowballs, building snowmen, squealing (yes, I personally witnessed this).  I’m SO glad I work in an office with windows.  I just can’t describe how gorgeous it was.  While standing around outside (along with everyone else who was supposed to be inside “working”), Scott and Wendy came by and asked about taking some pictures for their Christmas cards this year.  I was like, it’s not gonna get any better than this for Christmas cards.  So they went and prettied up in a hurry and came back just as the snow had begun to turn back into rain.  We were still able to get some good pictures though.  I’m really partial to the black and white ones this time, it seems.  They just seem to accentuate the vastness of the blanket of snow that covered the unsuspecting city of New Orleans this morning.  Not too sure how often I’ll have opportunities to take pictures in the snow, so I’m really enjoying these.

And my personal favorite…

It was SOOO cold!!! But so worth it.

I know Amanda thinks that I’ve forgotten about her, but I haven’t.  I promise.  Also, whilst home this past weekend, we met up with Jason & Amanda and their two beautiful children.  I could go on and on about how Luke will steal your heart with his eyes, and how Bethany could pass for a little princess with her fair skin and soft blond hair.  But you can see that for yourself.  Oh, and can I just say that I’ve never met anyone but Amanda who has the perfect smile in ALL of her pictures?!  And something nice about Jason….ummm…well, he has a beautiful family! 

If this picture doesn’t make you go “awww!” I don’t know what will.  How could you say no to a face like this?

He was clearly unsure about the idea of holding his sister’s hand:

I asked Luke what face his Daddy makes when they get in trouble. This was the response…

And the family shot…

Thanks so much for letting me have fun with your family on a Saturday morning (and thanks for the vanilla latte, too!)

David and Emily have been friends of ours for…like…ever, I think.  Dave currently holds the record for most comments on our blog, in fact.  Well, while we were home this weekend we took some pictures of their precious little girls.  And let me just tell you, they ARE precious.  Dave’s whole family was there (it was a holiday, or something?), so we took the opportunity to take some family pics as well.  Photographing babies was definitely a new challenge for me.  I just wish someone else would have been video-taping all the things that grown men were doing behind me in an effort to make the babies smile.  The babies were on to them.  Smiles were pretty scarce.  But we got some really cute pictures anyway.  Here are my favs, and there are more on flickr.

And the family shots…