To new beginnings!

Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe that 2011 has already reached its end.

Greg and I have been in Florida visiting family for Christmas, and I pretty much fell off the grid while I was down there. I don't think I checked my email or logged on to facebook a single time. It was pretty great.

This year has been a sweet one, especially the past few months, but I haven't been able to discuss any of the sweetness in this forum because Greg and I weren't ready to go public yet. I'm not a good at keeping secrets when they are my own, so it's been tough to keep up with this blog at all. It felt very much like every sentence I typed was dancing around a giant elephant in the room that I was determined not to acknowledge.

Without further ado, I'm very pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that Greg and I will be welcoming a new addition this June!

We are very excited, and we should find out the baby's sex next month. So far my pregnancy has been pretty smooth. I did get occasional morning sickness in the evenings (weird), but haven't thrown up aside from a pretty rough 24 hours of puking nonstop after being food poisoned about a month ago. And now the the first trimester is behind me, I can already feel that I have a lot more energy.

I'm sure I'll have lots more to say later, but I just wanted to get this out there now that we are finally "public" with this knowledge.

To new beginnings! Happy New Year!

Pre-Christmas

Greg and I had our own pre-Christmas this week because we're flying to be with family on December 25th and it seemed a bit silly to lug gifts for one another back and forth between destinations.

Greg surprised me with the most wonderful date night on Tuesday. He took me to a nice dinner downtown where he got steak and I got salmon. The food was delicious -- and the company was pretty delish as well, if I do say so myself!

Fancy restaurant with halls good and "decked"

Then he took me to a wonderful concert at the Walt Disney Music Concert Hall (which I had never even been inside!) and it was so good and fun and perfect for Christmas. The program was called "A Swinging Christmas" and it featured a jazz guitarist and his wife who is a singer as well as 3 more phenomenal musicians on piano, drums, and bass. They were really good, and performed really creative arrangements of classic Christmas songs as well as old Broadway numbers and James Taylor-esque hits. Really, really fun.

As if that weren't enough -- Greg gave me a stocking full of presents to open as well! One of my favorite gifts that I was given was a great "How To" book and some needles/yarn to teach myself how to knit. Greg remembered me mentioning a while ago that I would be interested in learning how to either knit or crochet. My husband is a tremendous encourager.

My first attempts at stitches.

This is shaping up to be a real nice... bookmark?  ;)

It has been a very busy season, but also a very good one. I look forward to posting a bit more often after the holidays, but in the meantime, I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

Kinda cool

I got a package in my office today with an unexpected gift.

My client sent me and my coworkers little personalized sketches from one of the animators we worked with this year:

They even went through the effort to frame them!

Kind of cool, and it was really thoughtful of them to remember us.

It's nice to be appreciated!

Hello, goodbye, see you soon!

It has been crazy around here lately, but I'm so looking forward to a little break for Christmas at the end of next week. (My office "closes" between Christmas and New Years -- it is sooooo nice)

Tonight I'm hanging out with my dear friend Lori before she moves across the country to Texas on Saturday. Lori was one of my first friends that I made in LA -- in fact, I believe that I hung out with her my very first weekend in town.

Lori is quite the adventurer. We have done a lot of really fun things together, mostly because she is so good at finding fun LA things to do. It's because of her that I first went to the Hollywood Bowl for goodness sakes -- and that's one of my favorite things to do each summer!

Beth & Lori circa October 2011

Lori is off to have another adventure, and I'm so excited for her, but I'm sure going to miss having her around these parts.

Best of luck to you, Lori -- I'd say "keep in touch," but I know you will. I love you!

How many publicists does it take to photograph a gift basket?

The answer, apparently, is: FIVE!

One to work the camera,

Three to hold the lights in our makeshift "studio,"

And One to snap photos of us on her iPhone while cracking "How many publicists does it take..." jokes.

It's been quite a day, folks.

Yep...Quite. A. Daaaaay.

Kind of rad

I saw this photo floating around on the facebook today and had to share:

Daria & Jane

Photo credit unknown*

Did anyone else watch Daria growing up? I used to love that show.  Anyway, I thought this photo was so cute and I really wanted to share it. I am dying to know who took this shot -- I'd be curious to know if they have any other awesome cartoons in their photography portfolio.

*If anyone knows who took this image please let me know so I can give them proper credit!

Anson!

You're not going to believe this, but this weekend I became an aunt for the second time! My nephew Anson Joseph (AJ) was born yesterday, and both he and my sister-in-law are doing just fine.

Anson Joseph

Get this though: the doctors got his due date wrong, so even though he is a perfectly healthy, fully "cooked" little bun, we weren't expecting him for another month! Poor Jeanette must have been completely shocked when her water broke on Saturday night.

Last night Greg and I got to hear Anson sleeping over the phone and it was just the cutest thing in the world. Jeanette said he was sound asleep, and yet we could hear him making the softest cooing sounds as slept. It was so precious. I wonder what he was dreaming about?

I just can't wait to meet him, and my other nephew (Henry) early next year. How lucky that these two cousins get to grow up so close in age to one another -- I bet that they will have many adventures together through the years.

Checking in

Forgive my lack of posts lately!

I have had so much going on lately and so many thoughts floating around my mind, but somehow haven't had the words to express them in this little blog. Maybe an unofficial hiatus was exactly what I needed?

Since the birth of my darling nephew, Henry, we've had a Thanksgiving with friends here in LA. The dinner itself was accomplished and served potluck-style and was followed by trivia and Running Charades. I made really tasty brown-sugar-glazed carrots with walnuts and rosemary (from Nov's Real Simple Magazine) and yet somehow managed to ruin the standard green bean casserole that I've made the past 5 years in a row... Oh well, there's always next year!

Along with the Thanksgiving holiday came a delicious 4-day weekend that was absolute paradise. Greg and I picked out and brought home our tree and spent the evening decorating and listening to Christmas music.

Don't you love our janky tree topper? It's some sort of a wicker ball with greenery in it.

I don't know where it came from, but until we find something different this is our go-to topper.

I know we'll accumulate more ornaments as the years go by -- we already have quite a few more ornaments than last year -- but I have to say that one of my favorite parts of decorating our tree is figuring out what else we could possibly use to help fill our tree!

It addition to our modest smattering of ornaments, our tree is currently sporting a key chain, a coin purse, a toy dinosaur, and an array of some other found items from around the house. Last year, I tucked a small note into the coin purse before I hung it on the tree, and this year I did the same. I have a feeling I will be collecting coin purses throughout the years so that I can keep our hidden note tradition alive. (It was so fun to read that note, only a year later! I love the idea of looking back over years of Christmases with Greg.)

I hope everyone has a nice weekend, it's going to be another busy one... Tis the season, I guess!