Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Woot! It's been a long time since I used this thing, but lots have happened. For one, I'm engaged! Julian and I dressed up as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and Agatha Heterodyne from Phil & Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius for the after haunt party. My sister Vi and her boyfriend Hank and her best friend dressed up as Teen Girl Squad - she had to build a dummy for So-and-So because Beka's lame boyfriend wouldn't do it. He dressed up as D&D Greg. He is so lame! It seems like everyone was dressing like something off the net. Even Mum & Dad were dressed as Miranda and Donovan Deegan from the Dominic Deegan cartoon.

Anyway, everyone was in on it. Everyone! I was the only one who didn't know anything about the proposal, which I suppose is how it's supposed to be, but still. I thought it was a birthday present. I mean Halloween IS my birthday, but no. It was a ring. A GORGEOUS ring. It's one of those claddagh rings, only the stone is an emerald. I'm not fond of diamonds, but I love emeralds. Evidently my parents helped him pick it out. He was really romantic about it. One knee, the whole thing. In front of everyone. I couldn't have said no even had I wanted to do so.

Wow. Engaged. Things have been whirlwindy since then. November just swept by like a autumn windstorm. I don't know where the time went. And the next thing I knew it was Thanksgiving and we had a houseful of people. Relatives came in from all over the place and I went and stayed with Julian at his place so people could bunk down in my room.

Thanksgiving was crazy. I was baking pies and bread and pumpkin roll and other goodies all week. We had two turkeys - I think we had a total of 25 people sit-down dinner on Thanksgiving day. And the tv in the living room broke, so all the little kids invaded the kitchen just as Mum and me were making the stuffing. Dad pulled a tv down from one of the upstairs lounges, but sheesh - trying to work with six little kids under your feet isn't easy. I wonder how Mum did it.

Julian's been working a lot - his company has been pushing for faster turn-around on his programming and debugging. It hasn't been like it was the end of August, but it's been lonely. At least it isn't like Hank's company - they cut his department to 2 people from 12. He's working long days just to keep up.

It was good to see all the relatives. Lots of family stories going around. Especially with Julian there and the engagement and all. Interesting how many of my baby pictures and other pictures came out of hiding over the five day holiday. Hmmm.

So now we're ramping up to Yule. Cleaning has started and the house smells of pinesol and pledge and floor cleaner. The walls, ceilings and floors have been done. Now we have to run the green machine over the rugs and furniture. All the curtains & drapes are being systematically taken down and washed, pressed and put back up. Bed linens are being washed and aired. Table linens are being taken out and aired and then pressed again. Vi's been cleaning all the chandeliers and glass covers on the lights.

Once all that is done, we start the baking. <grin> I love the baking. And Vi will go with Dad to pick out the tree this weekend. I guess we'll be decorating all next week and then have the whole tree-trimming thing with the music and the eggnog and Mum crying & reminiscing over each and every ornament as it comes out of the box. All of Mum's family is gone except one eccentric cousin, so she gets really sentimental about holidays. Dad's still got lots of family.

And this has gone on way too long. I have homework to do.
~Lily