Ahh to recap the last two months of bliss. Just kidding. Since Election Day, lots has been going on here!

Thanksgiving was awesome. Ryan came down to Savannah with me where we joined my sister, mom and dad for a nice long Thanksgiving weekend. Since my mom and dad are in the process of redoing their kitchen and have no appliances, we ate out a lot. We even had Thanksgiving dinner at one of their country clubs. Let me preference this by stating that growing up in Chicago we belonged to a very very nice country club that had amazing buffets where the food was never cold and never ran out. Even in Minnesota we have been so some great buffets, we are not talking OCB here kids or Crazy Buffet, but really nice buffets. Going in to Thanksgiving dinner I had super high hopes. I was starving and waited all day to eat moist delicious turkey. I will say that it was a glorified OCB. The food was running out and there was no pumpkin pie, I repeat no pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Who are these Southerners? Melissa quickly told me that she went in with very very low expectations thus not to be disappointed, but me for some reason I was too optimistic and therefore felt very let down! All in all the food was ok, out of 10 I'd probably give it a 4.5, I did go home with a full belly. I can't complain though, I was with my favorite people; Ryan, Mom, Dad, Melissa so it was a great experience. And I also have now realized after 25 Thanksgivings, nobody will make a meal better than my mom! :)

We also toured around the community on the golf cart! That was so awesome! We drove the golf cart to the gas station one afternoon because we needed more beer! It was so much fun. My dad had also recently gotten an HDTV and we tried (tried being the key word) to get the HD to work unfortunately the lady Comcast told my dad the box he just picked up would work with HD, however it did not. I hear now that they do have the correct HD box and are enjoying their TV in HD. Lucky ducks.

When we got back to Minnesota, we were in full Christmas mode ... we put up our Christmas tree and it looked beautiful! This was Ryan's first Christmas with a tree in his own apartment. I have a prelit artificial tree that my dad got me when I moved into my condo, so we were all set! We had great intentions of putting ornaments on it, I even had the nice ornament box under the tree just waiting to hang them, but we never had the motivation to do it! I did like the tree only with the lights, it was nice and simple.

Ever since my family moved from the East coast to the Midwest, our Christmas tradition was to have Christmas Eve dinner at a nice restaurant since we didn't have any other family living close by. Our Minnesota Christmas Eve dinner for the past 12 years has been spent at Kincaids. Kincaids is so yummy! Every year (with the expectation of 2004 because I had mono) I have ordered the wedge with blue cheese and the piete filet migon! I LOVE IT. It is so delicious! Well, since my parents moved we knew we wouldn't be having our Christmas Eve dinner at Kincaids this year, Ryan suggested that we go before Christmas and celebrate with the three of us! So that's just what we did. We put on nice clothes (Ryan looked very handsome in his suit) and we treated ourselves to a Kincaids dinner. We had a great time. This was the first time we were celebrating Christmas without my Grandma, so in her honor, I ordered a pink squirrel made with ice cream instead of cream. It was very good! A couple days after we had dinner, Melissa left for Savannah. I think in total she spent about 2 1/2 weeks down there. She has so much vacation it's not even funny!

Ryan and I decided to spend Christmas with our own family's this year as his sister, brother-in-law and nephew would be at his parent's house and I wanted to celebrate the first Savannah Christmas with my family. Ryan and I celebrated our Christmas the Thursday before and had a nice dinner at Biaggi's. After dinner we opened our gifts! Well, we also opened gifts before dinner too, but only the little ones! Ryan got me an iPod nano! I couldn't believe it! He had all my songs from my iTunes already downloaded on to the iPod! It was a great gift (B&K knew that he was getting me that so they gave us iTunes gift cards which was so awesome)! I also got a desk calendar and Clerks II which came in a silly gift pack (Mooby's Happy Meal thing, Mooby's Visor, Mooby's nametag and a Mooby's cup). I think for Halloween I'll go as a Mooby's employee! I gave Ryan Bose Headphones because I broke his other ones and I thought they would be good for recording! He liked them! Hooray!

Christmas was great in Savannah. My sister, mom, dad and my Aunt were there. Even though it was a short trip, it was great creating new memories with them in their new home. Grandma was very much missed as well. The food dilemma this time around was not an issue surprisingly! My mom had no oven, but she baked a couple of her signature holiday treats (pitzeles, zucchini bread and cream cheese brownies). Since this was the first holiday without Grandma's baked goods, Mom order cookies from a local bakery, I think she said she ordered 12 dozen. I'm bad with numbers so it might not be that many! They were good, that's all that matters! Saturday night we had dinner at this place called Bonefish Grill. They don't have any around here they are mainly in the South and Eastcoast, however they do have one in Des Moines, IA, go figure! It was good. Nice place to get fish in a trendy Redstone type of atmosphere. Sunday we tooled around again in the golf carts. My dad rented a golf cart so that the five of us could go out together! We toured all around to the different marinas and went to this look out point on the marsh (The Landings on Skidaway Island). It was really nice.

At the end of January, I served as jury member on a criminal sexual contact case that involved a 40 year old defendant and 2 14 year old girls. They say the average jury member only serves for 4 days. I served for 8. The trial itself wasn’t very long, it was the voir dire process that took two and a half days! First they gave us a questionnaire that was about 5 pages long that asked questions like; do you want to be on this jury, do you have formal training in any law, what is your highest level of education, have you ever filed a restraining order against somebody, have you ever been involved in a sexual assault, etc. Not only do you answer these questions for your self (retraining order, sexual assault) you also have to say if a family member or friend have as well. After we filled out the questionnaire, we were excused for the day and had to report back the next morning for the individual questioning. They brought all 50 of us in the court room and one by one we were called to the witness stand to be questioned by first the defense attorney and then the prosecutor. When I was answering the questions, I was so nervous. One of the things that bothered me was the questions I received by the prosecutor regarding my occupation and how that related to my level of education and if I was even able to use my degree in my current position. I didn’t see how that was relevant and yes I use some of my college education to help me succeed in my current position. And the other thing that bugged me was the fact that she said if I was chosen to serve, I would be the youngest member of the jury. No kidding. She asked how I felt about that in which I replied, “The last time I was a jury member, I was only 19 and it was not a problem. I support a man who is my father’s age and work in a company where I am one of the youngest employees. It is not a problem, someone is always going to be the youngest. After both attorneys decided I was worthy of serving on this case, we were excused for lunch. On my way out I asked one of the girls who looked my age how old she was and she said , “29.” She told me that I should have said it’s experience not age. After that I was known as the youngin’ on the jury. After we heard all the evidence, we deliberated for about six hours (over two days). In the end, we found the defendant guilty on all three counts he was charged for. Even though I did not have a doubt in my mind that he was guilty, hearing the verdict read was extremely emotional for me. The defense attorney called for all jury members to be asked if this was their choice for the verdict and we were to answer yes. One by one the law clerk called us by our last names and we had to answer that this was my sole decision. We were excused and when we went back to the jury room, I started to cry. Not because I thought I made the wrong decision, but because making that decision was emotionally draining. Do I think he deserves to be punished, of course! For me, it is difficult to watch people get punished. After the trial was completed we had an opportunity to meet the judge in his chambers to discuss the case, which was very comforting. We found out that the defendant was a level 3 offender and that this was his 3rd conviction and his sentence would be life in prison with eligible parole in 30 years for good behavior. Hearing the judge’s thoughts on the case made us feel at ease and at peace with our verdict. I never want to serve on a jury again. Two services in 7 years I think is good for me. Let’s give some other people a chance … say Melissa or Ryan?! I hear that have never served! J

Ryan and I have been working with our realtor even more now, viewing properties on the weekends. The first weekend out, we viewed 17 homes! WOW. Suggestion to others that are looking at homes, don’t do 17 in one day!!! Even though we were given a nice packet to take notes, after hours, they all tend to mesh into one ginormous house! We really liked a couple of them, one in particular that was the square footage and location (a little over our price range but the house has been on the market for a while) we were looking for. Today, we are going back to that house and looking at some other homes as well.

From Ryan’s blog, you know that our offer was not accepted. The lady pretty much said she doesn’t have to sell and she thinks her home is worth a bajillion dollars. Best of luck to you sweetie. I too thought my condo was worth at least 1.2 billion but then had to settle for peanuts. We went out again on Sunday and looked at 10 more houses. We feel luk warm about two. Ryan and I like to make fun of the people on house hunters when they say stupid shit like, oh I don’t like the pale yellow wall paint. I’d like it better if there was different furniture in here. Well stupids you’re not buying the dumb furniture (on very rare cases yes you would be in which case then I can see that being a factor) and a can of paint is cheap, get over it. That is until I start going into the houses and get so distracted by their personal effects. It amazes me now. I can relate to the tards on house hunters! Anyway, this one house had great spaces and tons of potential. While at the top of our price range, the kitchen needed work as well as the great room with all the wood paneling (if it was in the basement then we could deal for a little bit, but on the main level, not so sure) but to top it off, the house was being occupied by three individuals who were renting! Love the renters. After our realtor assured us that the property was in fact not being rented as it was homesteaded and homesteaded means that the property is occupied by the owner. Whatever. Dishes in the sink. Bath towels everywhere. Garbage overflowing in the bathroom. Shoes everywhere. And best part two of the roommates were guys and they had TVs galour. See what I mean about me getting side tracked like the tards on House Hunters? But we have fun looking at the houses! And because I’m very very slow in posting blogs you have also figured out by now that we finally bought a house. We bought the renter house! It’s awesome. I love it!