Hello 2009!

We had a very Happy New Year. I have a really nice boss that suggested I take a day off and head back to St. Louis for a visit, so I decided to take her up on it! We had 4 days back home and it was fun to see friends and family. We even got to babysit the Thompson kids and had so much fun hanging out with my favorite little girls.
We rang in the New Year with Dale, Missy, Erica & Chad and then promptly went back to Steve's folks house to go to bed. I am so not a party animal anymore and rarely stay up past midnight. Is that a sign that I'm getting older?

Anyway...besides that we did the whole tourist thing while we were in town. We went on tour of the Anheuser Busch Brewery with the Roberts, Hallstens and Steve's folks and also went to Steve's parents favorite restaurant, Hodak's. That's when things kind of went downhill. I'm not much of a fan of Hodak's and really don't think there's anything healthy on the menu. Fried food is what they're known for. Anyway...so Steve decided to get some fried chicken (their specialty) and I stuck with a turkey burger. Not long after we had dinner Steve got pretty violently ill and stayed that way for the rest of our trip, our drive home and even a few days after we got back to Madison. It was miserable! I'm not sure if he got food poisoning or if it was because he just wasn't used to eating fried, greasy food like that. Steve's folks had the fried chicken too and felt fine.
Anyway, so that kind of ruined the trip a little, but nonetheless it was good to go home and see familiar faces. I can't really say that I terribley miss St. Louis, but I do miss the familiarity of our life there and most of all our friends. I was shocked at how much warmer it was in St. Louis compared to Madison. It was so sunny and bright there and after the kind of weather we had here it totally felt like we were on vacation in sunny California. It still amazes me that the weather can be so drastically different just 6 hours away.
On to another topic,I haven't had much time to think of what I'd like to see happen in 2009. I'm really not much of a "resolution" type, but I do like to set goals and re-evaluate where I'm at with the goals I set for the previous year. One thing I'd really like for 2009 is to learn Spanish. Once we start having kids we both really want them to be bilingual, so Steve and I have been trying to work on our Spanish in preparation for whenever that day may come. Of course I also want to work on eating healthier. Overall we eat pretty healthy, but I want to learn to start cooking more from scratch so that I know exactly what is going into my food. I'm no Betty Crocker though, so we'll see how that one goes. Other than that I'm not sure what I want to see happen in 2009. I really like to achieve goals that I set for myself and because of that don't like to set my goals in haste but prefer to really sit down and think them through and be realistic - the hard part now is just finding the time to sit down and do that!

I'm so excited to see all that 2009 has in store for us!