Merry Late Christmas and Happy Early New Year

Since my last blog, I finished the Twilight Saga and Jason & I have seen "Twilight" twice. I'm so hooked! I'm now eagerly looking forward to the realease of the companion book (sometime in 2009), the release of Midnight Sun (who knows when), and the release of "New Moon" (which hasn't even started filming, yet).

I'll still have plenty to read, though. I have to come clean and admit that I have never read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, or The Lord of the Rings. I know, I know....you're asking yourself, "How can that be? Lora's such a HUGE fan of those stories!" The simple answer is that I just never got around to it. I've spent the last 15 years or so reading tons of crap (romance novels and other books that are quickly forgotten) and tons of classics (Catcher in the Rye and Sense & Sensibilty are my favorites) and lots of knitting. Never fear, today I am starting on The Chronicles of Narnia. I bought an anthology that has all of the books placed in the order in which C.S. Lewis intended them to be read, not in the order in which they were released. I'll have to share that info with you another time because the book is in the bedroom, and I am not.

Back to "Twilight" for a moment. I finished my first pair of mittens like the ones in the movie. Hurray! My first pair of human sized mittens. In the past, they've all been Hobbit or Jolly Green Giant sized. They're dark gray tweed. A little bit tight on my wide paws so Meli (who's hands are much smaller than mine) is the lucky recipient of them. Congrats, Meli! I then went to work on a light blue pair. I have the left one finished. The thumb is a little bit large, but the rest is perfect. A million thanks to Subliminal Rabbit for writing the pattern and posting it on her blog for free!

Christmas was good this year. Very simple, but good. Jason surprised me with Samantha's doll trunk. Woohoo! I immediately grabbed Sam, did a little fashion show for Jas, prayed that changing the clothes of a baby will be easier than those of an 18 inch doll, changed Sam's hairstyle, thanked God I'm having a boy because I'm bad at the whole hair styling thing, and then put everything away in the trunk. Tons of fun.Mom, Jason & I went to see The Nutcracker at the Louisville Ballet on the 20th. This is a tradition for Mom and me. We've been going every year since I was 6 or 7. It's been so long we can't remember. I just know it was before I started pointe, and I did that when I was 8. Anyway, we've mostly seen Louisville's, but when I lived in Georgia, Mom & I would go to the Atlanta Ballet and Jason & I would got the the Georgia Ballet (to see Lara dance). Last year's perfomance had me in tears. There's a Russian dancer named Natalia Something at Louisville, and her feet are so perfect and her dancing is so perfect, I cried from the beauty of it. Seriously. I was really hoping to see her again this year. It was not to be. The perfomance we went to didn't even have the same woman dancing Snow Queen and Sugar Plum Fairy. Which turned out to be a good thing because the woman dancing Snow Queen was having an off perfomance and came across as a graceless cow. Yeah, I said it. She stumbled through most of the dances. Her landings were heavy (hence, the cow part....she definitely wasn't sized like one). The Sugar Plum Fairy's dance was shorter than it has been in the past. When Helen Starr, Elizabeth Hartwell or Natalia Something danced it, they did the full song. Oh, well. I still loved getting to see it.

My baby bump is growing still. No new pics to post because it's growing up and not out. What fun is that? It's about an inch and a half above my belly button now. My belly tattoos are starting to look funny. I think the green apple will be a cucumber by the end of this! There's no telling what my Goonie's inspired tat will look like by then....

My dear Kandice was still in the bag that I carried at Lincoln Days. I never would have thought to look for him there. I used it to carry some knitting over to my parents' house for our big Christmas dinner on the Sunday before Christmas. I didn't find him until after dinner when we were all sitting at the table, and I decided to show Jeanne and Blythe the awesome soy-wool yarn I'm using for a new scarf. As I pulled all of the yarn out, Kandice came out, too! I got a pic of him with Rob & Jeanne. I'm so happy to have him back on the mantel where he used to live when not adventuring with me. He better not go hiding on me again!