Snow falling quietly, kneading yeasty dough, sipping French hot
chocolate, and knitting green curls. I like today.

I told Ben that I couldn't believe another decade has passed.  "Really?" he asked, "I can.  We had a lot happen in the last ten years."  We thought of all the momentous things that happened to us in the aughts. 

• Most of our courtship and our marriage
• All of my undergrad education
• My first real job as a research assistant
  
• Completing a second degree
• My second real job as a nurse
  
• Most of Ben's college years
• Numerous jobs for Ben
• Moving five times in three cities
  
• Buying our first house
• Buying my first car
• Buying my first new car
• Travel too numerous to count
• Thousands of knit stitches
• Thousands of video games
• A movie-making phase
• A ballet revival phase
  
• Getting a cat
• Getting a dog
• Three computers for me, who knows how many for Ben?

Ok, proven wrong.  I guess it seems right that ten years have passed, given all the growth we've had. 

We're excited to start a new adventure this year.  For those who haven't heard yet, we're having a baby in May.  That's right, I'm 21 weeks pregnant.  Want to know why I was so quiet in the blogosphere in October and November?  That's called the first trimester and it BLOWS!  But those times are past, I feel pretty great these days.  The little kid has finally made itself known to me.  Just in the past week I started feeling movement.  Now I swear it's doing somersaults in there.  Tomorrow we have the big ultrasound to find out if our first will be a little boy or little girl.  I don't care which, I just want to know!  I'll be sure to let you all know too, and perhaps I'll fill in some details on how the pregnancy has been so far. 

Happy New Year and here's to ten more!

Christmas break is turning into a fiber feast!  I've been knitting up a storm on my new addi-clicks turbo needles and learning to spin on my new spinning - wait for it - wheel!  Holy smokes it's so much fun. Technically it belongs to both me and Amanda.  Santa thinks we are mature enough to share a Christmas present.  :-)  I'm taking video clips of our vacation.  In January I'll knit those together into a little film of Christmas with the Waterhouses.  Hope everyone is having a relaxing week!

I'm trying very hard to stay jolly today.  Peppermint hot chocolate in my thermos, Big Soft Ginger cookies packed to take to coworkers, a green t shirt under my scrubs (gasp!  against the rules!).  But it still sucks to have to work on Christmas Eve.  Darn people getting sick.  Here's some Muppets to lift any other sinking spirits.


http://www.hulu.com/embed/hDzecNT5xiBVIHaGtNQLRg

Jem is a major wimp when it's cold.  We wouldn't care except she won't pee when it's icy and we have to make multiple trips out to get her to go.  We've never had much luck with boots in the past.  It seems the designers rarely test them on actual dogs.  Ben came across these at Petsmart and they work great!  Not only that, they would totally fit in Jerrica/Jem's wardrobe.  What do you think? 

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8361074&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Jem's Boots from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

Just got back from a quick trip home for the holidays.  I'll be back for Christmas, but took advantage of a long work break by visiting Grand Junction.  I finished some craft projects, started some new ones, and made many many marshmallows.  Somehow I have become the homemade marshmallow guru.  I travel the mountains imparting the wisdom of whipped sugar.

While holiday shopping with my mom I got a fabulous new Christmas tree.  I already had this rad black tree from last year.  Check out my new disco-tastic green tree!

I couldn't be bothered with a full sized tree this year.  But these little guys I can handle.  Here are some more Christmas-related photos I've been meaning to post:


Isn't my advent calendar chocolate TOTALLY a companion cube??

Earlier this month I went to the Holiday Handmade craft fair with Miranda.  She blogged about it here.  I'm finally posting my pictures of all the beautiful crafts (note: I received permission to take every photo).  Boy was it crowded!  Next year we'll go on the second day and plan to do more shopping.  I had most of gifts done already.  Even so, it was good I only brought a limited amount of cash.  I needed something to keep my spending in check!  Luckily most of these sellers have etsy.com shops.  I collected many business cards and plan to return to their online stores later.