Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Mood:  special
*DON'T FORGET, 2 NEW ENTRIES BELOW!*

As a few of you know, I managed to make it home for 11 days to visit family and friends for Christmas. I hadn’t been home for more than two days in nearly a year, so it was a much-needed visit. I got to stop over and see Ela in Chicago for one night before I made it home. She’s looking sexy as ever and very excited about her new loft and job. She repeatedly told me (as did pretty much everyone over break) that I’d better move back the states eventually and not live abroad forever… I don’t really have a response as of yet, but I think I’ll make it back one day J.
For Christmas, I spent my time in our house full of people (8 of us) as my sister and brother, 2 grandparents, great grandmother, and parents were all there. Don’t forget, myself and two dogs as well. We had quite the house full and I managed to sleep past 930 one or two days of my break since you hear everyone when you sleep in the most central part of the house… We had all of the relatives over Christmas day and it was really good to see them and catch up on what everyone’s been up to in my absence. On the night of the 26th my family went to the Tulalip Casino to celebrate my cousin Josh’s 21st birthday at 1201 (technically the 27th). It was crazy to see how many people actually go to the casino on Christmas night.
My sister, Annie and I went to Seattle with our friend Mike who goes to UW a few times. We hit up places like J&M, Tiki Bob’s and Cowgirl’s inc. We had some fun nights together. My aunt and Amy, Josh’s girlfriend came along to Cowgirls where we danced all night long. I actually also went to a house party of a boy that I hadn’t hung out with since 6th grade. I ran into him randomly when I was out in Lake Stevens one night and we reminisced. It was really odd to go to his house party and see people I hadn’t seen in a long time and find out what they’d been up to. Annie and I also went and played pool with my bro, Jeremy and his best friend from childhood Josh (yeah, there are a lot of Josh’s). Jere and I beat Annie and Josh 2 out of 3 games. Yay! This is an amazing feat since I suck at pool, thanks Jere for picking up the slack. It was strange to go out with both my sister and bro since Annie just turned 21 in Sept. but it was a really great time. Overall, my holidays went really quickly but it was really good to see everyone and I enjoyed all my chats with my various grandparents. Also, I got to see Josh Padgett a few times, which was really fun. He came and played cards with my fam one night. He’s doing really well, but anxious to find out if he passed his second actuarial exam so he can start hunting for a job in that field. Good luck!
Also, congratulations to my cousin Eric, who by now should be engaged to a wonderful woman! He was supposed to be proposing on New Year’s Eve. The first of the cousins on my dad’s side to get engaged, but not that surprising since he’s our only cousin on that side, haha! Now who’s gonna be the first in ours? Not it!
I came back to Galway just in time for New Year’s Eve. After 24 hours of travelling from 6am on the 30th to 2pm on the 31st I had time to take a quick nap and head off to Liv and Tracy’s to get ready to go out. We ended up sitting in her ginormous bathroom and chatting till bout 1030 when we decided to head into town. We ended up at Busker’s, a pub as most other places were full. It was a great time and we met up with a few other people we knew. The three of us girls gave each other kisses on the cheek for New Years… Aren’t we cute? Haha. Then, we went back to their house where there was a bit of a house party goin and stayed up till about 6am.