Precious Memories

So this will be the first in a series of blogs about my visit home to TX.  There was just way too much material for one blog, haha.  I'll try not to make you wait too long for all the juicy details.

I think I told you a little bit about my family a few blogs back.  Basically, my mom and her siblings (minus my uncle Brad, who lives in California) and all of their kids/spouses/their kids get together for basically every holiday. But Christmas is probably our favorite, because even the wayward prodigals like myself make an appearance.

We always do breakfast at my grandparents' house on Christmas morning.  This year, since Christmas was on a Sunday, our family (my mom, dad, and I) ate breakfast with everyone, then left and went to church and came back.  When we got back to the house, everyone was cracking up and passing around pictures, newspapers, etc.  Turns out while we were gone, my grandma had pulled out these boxes that she had saved full of memories from each of her kids' lives.  They were full of things from newspaper articles about them, to their report cards, wedding announcements, class pictures, and all kind of things they had made as kids.  It continued into things that my siblings and cousins had done - our preschool and high school graduation programs, thank you cards we had written them, and so much more.

Some of my favorite things I found in my mom's box:

My grandparents lived on the main street of my hometown and used to put big announcements (like this one of course!) on this sign out front.

Just in case everyone didn't see the sign, here's the official birth announcement in the paper,. Does anyone else think it's weird that they put their address in there? I can't believe no one tried to kidnap me after this.

I'm pretty sure my folks are roller-skating in this picture.  And maybe going to bale some hay?

My parents' wedding announcement.
Some things to note:
My mom was 17 when they got married and my dad was 24. I used to joke with them that I was planning to do the same when I was 17.  They didn't really find it amusing. I guess times were different then.
Apparently people were very interested in all the details, down to the plaid pantsuit (haha) she wore as they traveled to their honeymoon.

Really, mom and dad??  That is a serious bowl cut.

Rockin the frilly collar

Me and my sisters.  I really hope this is from Halloween, but I am pretty sure it isn't...

My and Christopher (my cousin and his fiancee), Clay and April (my cousin and her husband), and my Uncle Mike

My Aunt Michelle, my cousin Julie, my dad, and my cousin Erica

My grandpa and my parents

Feeling very blessed to have come from such a legacy of love and faith, and I hope I get to sit down one day with my kids and grandkids and have as much fun as we did this Christmas.

The Best Gift

So yes, Christmas is just around the corner, so I'm sure a lot of you have gifts on the mind, whether it's the tons you still have left to buy (like me!) or the ones you're hoping to get under the tree.  I hope in the spirit of the season, you'll indulge me getting a little serious and sharing with you about one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Most of you know that I spent about 6 1/2 years working with a ministry called Children At Heart, more specifically the Texas Baptist Children's Home in Round Rock, TX.  And I know I talk about it a lot, but I really can't help myself.  It's still so much of who I am, and the people there are so precious to me.  It's hard not to talk about what you love. :-)  Anyhow, for those I haven't talked to death about it, when I left in March 2011, I was the case manager for all the girls living on campus, but in my earlier years working there, I had the privilege of getting to work with a special group of boys that lived in Cottage 7.  This cottage was the "little boys" cottage on campus. In fact, a lot of the boys I placed were as young as 5 or 6 when they came to us.  Cottage 7, while they could be very physically exhausting, were basically my emotional escape during my years at TBCH.  If I was having a rough day, if my teenage girls' cottage had pushed me to the brink of insanity (don't get me wrong, I loved those girls to death too, but come on, teenage girls are who they are), or if I just needed to "get away,"  I would go to Cottage 7.  An hour of playing with those little guys was the best medicine for a bad day. :-)  It would be hard to express how truly special these guys are to me.  When it was determined that we were going to make the shift for me to take over the girls and I realized that meant I was going to have to give up the case management for the boys, it was actually quite heartbreaking for me.

But we made the shift, and even though I moved into a less direct role with them, I still got to be a big part of their lives through the choirs and other things on campus.  When I knew I was going to make the move to NYC, I think they were the hardest kids to tell.  One in particular, Heath (obviously not his real name), took it pretty hard.  I had placed Heath about 3 years earlier, when he was 9, after his father's death (his mother had left when he was just a toddler).  I had spent a lot of time working with different specialists to get him diagnosed and treated for multiple social and learning disabilities, and though he still had his struggles, he was (and still is) doing great.  My last week on campus, I went around saying my goodbyes, and spent an afternoon over at cottage 7.  Heath said, "Miss Janell, I have a present for you." and he went back to his room.  He comes back with a pretty large red plastic dragon figurine, which he presents to me proudly.  This might not seem like much to any of you, but I knew that that dragon had been given to him by his host family, whom he adored, and was one of his most prized possessions.  

This, funnily enough, set off a hilarious chain of events where all of the boys went to their rooms to get me a comparable "gift." Some of the things I received that day...two stuffed dolphins, like 5 Zhu Zhu pets (and even a Zhu Zhu pets "house"), some interesting lego creations, a porcelain cat, and probably some other things I can't remember.  I could barely carry it all back to my office.

But anyhow, all this to say that that bizarre red dragon is now one of my most prized possessions.  In fact, much to the chagrin of my roommate, it sits right on my dresser all the time.  And every day when I see it, it is a reminder of how, even though I am selfish and awful and was totally not equipped to do that job, God was somehow able to use me to help these amazing children.  It's also a good reminder that even though it sounds cliche', the best gifts are really those that come from the heart.  That's a good thing to keep in mind in these coming days.

So, I know you're dying for the visual, and I don't think it will disappoint...

Beautiful, isn't it? :-)

And in the interest of not being too serious here, another quick Heath story...

When I came back to TX in July for my cousin's wedding, I drove up to Round Rock for the day to see everyone.  Heath was in trouble, so he was stuck in his room for a little bit, but his house parents were kind enough to let me pop in and say hi.  It was pretty great to see him, and he told me he had a gift for me. Of course, he had no idea I was coming, so I don't think he put quite as much thought into this one.  Haha.  THIS is what he came up with:

Yes, that is a cat feeding bowl he made in ceramics.  Do I own a cat?  Nope. Do I even like cats? Nope. So I guess Heath is 1-for-2 with the giving, but the red dragon makes up for the cat bowl, I guess.  :-)

Hope you all have a truly blessed holiday season, my friends.  By the way, I think it goes without saying that the gift of Jesus trumps red dragon and cat bowl.  Don't forget it.

Thanksgiving, Fakesgiving...As Long As There's Turkey, Who Cares??

Well, my friends, I hope you all had a delightful Thanksgiving.  I, personally had a very different day than I'm used to, but I am learning that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'll start by describing a typical Thanksgiving for me...
<Many of you know my family, so sorry for the quick history lesson for my other blog readers>
I was extremely blessed to have grown up with essentially my ENTIRE extended family (well, on my mom's side, my dad is an only child) within minutes of me.  My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were all within about 20 minutes of where I lived with my parents. Even now, as adults, everyone but me lives within about an hour of each other.  There are 9 grandkids in all, so that's already a pretty big crowd, and now we've started adding in spouses/significant others and even kids of our own (well only my sister Alecia has those for now), so we have anywhere from 15-25 people on a given holiday.

We usually do Thanksgiving at my parents' house (Christmas is at my grandparents').  I always wake up early in the morning, turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and pretend to help my mom in the kitchen while sneaking away every chance I get to watch the TV (don't worry, I record it and watch the parts I miss later). The family starts coming around 2:00, and it gets real loud real quick.  We are just a loud family, there's no getting around it.  We love to talk to each other and play games and yell at the football game on TV, it's just what we do. Thanksgiving is a wonderful, LOUD, delicious day in my family.

This year, I knew it wasn't really going to be feasible for me, financially or otherwise, to come home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So I opted to take some time off at Christmas and spend Thanksgiving here in New York.

Back in October, when Sara and I knew we were both going to be here for Thanksgiving, we thought it wise to do a dry run, a test drive if you will, basically to make sure we didn't suck at making all the Turkey Day delicacies we had "helped" make all these years.  Sara had done this last year and dubbed it "Fakesgiving," so we decided to officially make it a yearly event and set about planning it.  We bought all of the essentials and invited our closest friends over to partake in this unofficial holiday.  I think 2010's Fakesgiving consisted of 4 people at our old apartment in Glendale...this year, we had SEVENTEEN people in our tiny little apartment.  We didn't even have enough seats so we had to get creative.  Check it out:

Good Food & Good Friends

Friends from my Apostles community group

Nothing wrong with eating picnic-style on the floor :-)

Amazing friends that I get to work with every day

Despite the "coziness" of having all those people in our apartment, it was one of my favorite New York moments to date.  Having friends from all of the areas of our lives...co-workers, high school friends, college friends, Apostles friends...it was amazing and we felt so thankful (forgive the pun) to have everyone together for a delicious pre-Thanksgiving get-together.

Our real Thanksgiving was a little more low-key. I didn't get up and turn on the parade, I got up and actually went to the parade!!  Although the real thing requires getting up a LOT earlier and being a LOT colder than watching it from my parents couch, it was still pretty cool to see it in person.  I try not to double up too much between my blog and Facebook, so check out my Facebook if you want to see the whole parade album, but here are a few of my favorites:

To Infinity...And Beyond!

Kung Fu Panda

Snoopy

Straight No Chaser...you should all know them if you took my advice a few blog posts ago and bought their Christmas albums.  One of my all-time favorite groups!!

The star of the show, Santa himself

After we thawed out from the parade and took a quick nap, we prepared all the food and our friends started arriving.  This time there were only 7 of us - Sara and I plus our friends Andrew, Audrey, Allison, Angie (What's with all the A names??), and Whitney.  We ate and hung out and ate and ate some more....

Andrew, Allison, Sara, Whitney, Me

Yum!

Sooo many desserts!

It was a truly enjoyable and relaxing Thanksgiving, and though I obviously missed my family, it was fun to start some new traditions up here.  Plus, I got to Skype in with the whole family while they were all together, so it was almost like being there myself. :-)

---

Alex (and any of my other Scrooge-like friends), you can stop reading here...


So, it's really starting to look and feel like Christmas here.  The weather has been absolutely beautiful, but it's definitely starting to get chilly.  All the stores are decorated and there are about 2-3 times the normal amount of tourists (the only downside to this wonderful time of year, haha).

My friend Skip and I actually went ice-skating in Bryant Park on our lunch break the other day.  I haven't been ice skating in years, so that was interesting.  And Skip is from Maine, that's all I'm gonna say about that.  He actually got in trouble (several times) for skating too fast.  Haha.  I did NOT get in trouble for skating too fast, that's for sure.  But I also didn't fall on my butt, so that's something.

Another very touristy thing I did this week was checking out the store windows.  For those of you who don't know, a big tradition here is that the major department stores in Manhattan (i.e. Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Saks, Barney's...) go all out and decorate their windows for the holidays.  It's a pretty big deal - they have to rope off the sidewalk in front of the windows so the gawkers don't get in the way of the rest of the sidewalk traffic.

Anyway, I got off work early on Monday, so I walked like 40 something blocks up 5th Avenue and checked them all out.  Pretty amazing stuff.

Macy's

Lord & Taylor

I don't even know what store this is

Trump Tower

Bloomingdale's

And best of all, today after work I ventured over to Rockefeller to see this bad boy...

And take a real good look, because I will not be going anywhere near Rockefeller/Times Square/etc until after New Year's. No, seriously.  Tonight I made the mistake of walking down 50th as one of the Rockettes' shows was letting out and literally was stuck for 25 minutes on ONE BLOCK.  I couldn't move because there were people shoved in all around me.  If I was more claustrophobic, I probably would have had a panic attack, but I survived.

Alright, well that's all I got for now, but I'm sure there will be more Christmas in New York goodness to come. Sorry, Scrooges.

Happy Friday!

Visitors and Celebrity Sightings!

One great thing about living in New York is that people tend to come visit you a little more than if you were living somewhere boring.  So Sara and I have definitely had our fair share of friends and family come to see us.  Some of our recent visitors...

Kristi, Shahla, and Candace came over Labor Day
Us at Coney Island

My good friend Erin
I can neither confirm or deny that this was taken at the NKOTBSB concert

The Mennings, some sweet friends from Round Rock, were in town and came by my office to have lunch with me

My sister Kristi, and her fiance Corbett, were just here last weekend (sorry I don't have a pic of him, but this is the ONLY picture we got all weekend!)

And let's be real, it just wouldn't be life with me without a few sweet celebrity sightings...

One was a little obscure.  In fact, those of you who even know this guy may not want to admit it for fear of showing your age.  But nonetheless...

This is Mike Bivins, or the "Biv" in Bel Biv Devoe.  You might think you don't know who that is, but trust me, you know the song that made them a one-hit-wonder..."Poison" (That girl is poisoooonnn...).  We just so happened to run into them at a hotel after their guest appearance at the aforementioned NKOTBSB concert.

I also saw Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy over near our Chelsea office the other day, but it was raining and I had to get back to work, so I didn't get a pic.  But you know who I DID get a pic of??

This guy.

Oh yes, the extremely talented and ridiculously handsome Hugh Jackman is in town doing a show on Broadway.  Kristi, Corbett, and I just so happened to pass by his theater when he was arriving one night and taking pictures/signing autographs/etc. One of my favorite sightings to date.

You can be sure I will be spotting some more A-listers (and B and C and even D-listers) in the near future, so I will keep you posted.

What, Janell still has a blog??

I am not going to spend a bunch of time apologizing for being a sucky blogger.  Suffice it to say, I'm sorry, I am still alive and kicking, and I will try to do better. :-)

Sooooo, how do I sum up the last 5ish months for you?  It would be hard.  So many amazing and wonderful things are happening up here in NY and I certainly don't have the time or energy to tell you about all of them. So I'll give you the highlights.

I am coming up on my 9-month anniversary here in the city.  Since I last blogged, I have moved apartments (and boroughs, for that matter).  Sara and I are now proud residents of Brooklyn (Prospect Heights, to be more specific).  We love the new place, and it's SOOOO much more accessible to Manhattan, which is nice.  It cut my commute by more than half.  Sara wrote a great blog about the apartment, so rather than repeat everything she said, you should just read her post here.

I also just celebrated my 6-month anniversary at my job.  I have been so incredibly blessed with the people and the work I get to do there, and I am really looking forward to my future with this amazing company.

Sorry it's so blurry, but it's the only picture I have of the 3 of us

Shortly after my last blog, I went back to the great state of TX to see my family and attend my cousin April's wedding to my lifelong friend Clay (we went to kindergarten together!!).  It was a beautiful ceremony, of course, and really special for me because I got to see so much family and tons of friends from growing up as well.  So very happy for them, and thrilled to have Clay be a part of our family.  Some of my favorite memories from the trip...

My big sister, Alecia

Finally got to meet baby Eli! His mom, Rebecca is one of my oldest and dearest friends.

SOOOOO happy to see my sweet niece, Bella!

And, of course, this little man, my nephew, Cooper

It was definitely hard coming back home, but I have to say, fall in New York is absolutely breathtaking.  All around me, the trees are changing colors and losing their leaves, and there is this wonderful chill in the air that reminds me the holidays are just around the corner.  I took this picture the other day just down the street...

And best of all, I saw this the other day when I was walking past Rockefeller Center...

That's right, folks, the tree preparations are underway, which I am super pumped about. :-)  Holiday decorations are popping up all over the place, and I LOVE IT.

Ok, time to close for now, but I'll leave you with a story...

On Veterans' Day last Friday, I was walking down my street to the subway station.  All of the sudden, I hear some stomping and huffing and puffing happening behind me.  I turn around and there is a little guy, probably like 8 years old, wearing his backpack and clearly frustrated.  He is repeatedly letting out these huge sighs and literally stomping and shaking his fists.  My curiosity got the better of me, so I asked him what was wrong.  He very angrily said,

"THOSE IDIOTS!"
Before I could ask him who the idiots in question were, he says,
"You know where I go to school??" (I did not)
"ALLLLLL the way up there at PS 43!"
"And you know where I live??" (Also did not)
"Way down here at 1015 Washington Ave..." (His mom should probably have the "stranger danger" talk with him, come to think of it...)
"And THOSE IDIOTS did not tell me there was no school today!!"

This little guy had gotten up out of bed and walked all the way to school on a holiday.  Poor thing. I tried to help him see the bright side by reminding him that no school was most definitely a good thing.  He wasn't really having it.  He finally said,

"I guess you're right.  It is a nice day out."

Such wisdom.

When we got to his apartment building, he goes,

"Well, this is me. Catch ya later!"

Haha.  He totally made my day, and I hope he ended up enjoying his day off, however unexpected it may have been.

So here's to looking on the bright side.  Catch ya later! :-)

Running For The Hills

So, I randomly decided to read back through my first foray into blogging today.  For those of you who don't know, I chronicled my half-marathon training back in 2009 so that the world could laugh at me as I feebly attempted to be a "marathonist."  I had forgotten what an idiot I was for ever doing that in the first place, but I'm glad to have the blog to remind me (and hopefully deter me from ever doing anything like that ever again...haha).  Also, Sara is currently training for another one (without me, obviously), so I thought this would be a good time for me to encourage you to support/heckle/harass her if you feel so inclined.

I thought I would share the link for any of my new blog readers (or old ones who want to relive the torture all over again).  Rest assured, there are no running endeavors in my immediate future, so this is the closest you'll get. :-)

www.runningforthehills2009.blogspot.com

Happy Monday!

Christmas in June...and a Bunch of Other, Unrelated Things

Let me start by wishing everyone a happy June 25th!  What is so special about June 25th, you ask (or don't ask, if you've ever spent one with me)?  Well, my friends, June 25th means that we are exactly halfway to Christmas.

Yes, folks, I am one of "those" people.  I love Christmas, in a ridiculous, over the top, kind of way.  I can't explain it.  I feel like I am relatively normal in every other way (though some of you may beg to differ), but this is my one true quirk.  If you were to look at my iTunes, you would find over 3000 Christmas songs in my library.  When I worked at the children's home, my kiddos would play a guessing game called, "How Many Different Versions of {insert cheesy Christmas song here} does Miss Janell have on her iPod?" It would keep them entertained for hours.  :-)

Something that I have done for at least the past 4 or 5 years is that every June 25th, I throw a HUGE party for the kids in the gym.  I personally think it is one of the richest traditions we have (had, I guess :-(  ) there. Haha.  I would get on the internet and order a bunch of crazy Christmas-themed prizes (CD's, movies, shirts, etc) and things like "Snow in a Can" (which unfortunately cannot be bought in stores year round).  A bakery in town even made special Christmas cookies for the event.  We would go up in the attic and pull down all the Christmas decorations and turn the gym into a winter wonderland...keep in mind this is Texas in the summer, so it's usually anywhere from 90-110 degrees outside.  In fact, it was always hard to keep the canned snow from melting off the windows.

But anyway, it was always a lot of fun.  We would play games, watch Christmas movies (my kids almost always chose Elf), eat tons of Christmas goodies, drink hot chocolate, and at the end, I would always read the Christmas story from Luke 2.  Seriously one of my favorite days of the year.  I love that the kids would get into it (or at least pretend to) as much as I did.  That's the stuff I miss the most.  I am a little sad today knowing that there is no "Christmas in June" party being prepared for right now at TBCH.  I truly miss those kids and getting to pour my life into them through that ministry.

But before I get too sappy and depressing, I tried to find some pictures of this infamous party, but it appears I never took any, or they got lost in the shuffle of the move.  So, as a consolation prize, please enjoy this adorable picture of some of my kiddos at the TBCH Christmas program, circa 2009, I think.

And now, a few little nuggets from the past month...

I got to indulge my love of all things Broadway in late May/early June when I got to see two fantastic shows in one week.  I think I alluded to it in another blog, but Rachel got us rush tickets to see How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying when she was in town.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised, especially with Daniel Radcliffe.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want him to go out and record an album or anything, but it was obvious he trained really hard for this role, both vocally and...choreographically?  Is that a word?  Anyway, he's a good dancer.
The other show I saw was Memphis.  I went with my mom and dad while they were in town, and we had a blast.  Probably ranks in my top 3 shows I've seen, ever.  I totally get why they won the Tony for Best Musical last year.

I was super pumped when I scored some free tickets to the Black-Eyed Peas concert in Central Park for June 9th.  Alas, not so pumped when a freak storm hit the city and it got cancelled (only after Andrew and I stood out in the storm waiting on the official word).  But, we drowned our sorrows in some Shake Shack and now await the news on the reschedule.

We had our company picnic on Wednesday.  I am under strict orders not to reveal anything about it until our cohorts in San Francisco have theirs this Wednesday, but I will definitely be sharing about that soon, and bragging on my friend/co-worker/party-planner extraordinaire Jason for making it a pretty awesome night.

My 29th birthday was on Thursday.  It has been pretty much a whole week of celebrating (with still more to come tonight and tomorrow). I'm not a huge birthday person.  I just don't get really excited about them.  But I have amazing friends and family that insist on making me feel special, so who am I to deny them that? :-)
Tuesday, some of my friends took me out to Lombardi's in Nolita.  We ordered tons of pizza that I have now dubbed as the best in New York (at least until I find something better) and tried not to stare too closely at the table of huge, scary, Italian mafia guys sitting next to us.  However, they were clearly paying attention to us, because at the end of meal, our waiter told us that the bill had been taking care of by the lovely gentlemen to our left.  What exactly does it mean when the mob pays for your meal?  Am I indebted to them for life now?  Are they going to make me offer I can't refuse?  Will I wake up with a dead horse head in my bed tomorrow?  It all remains to be seen, but for now I am just happy for the free meal.
After Lombardi's, we went to my FAVORITE place in the city, Rice to Riches.  They have all these different flavors of rice pudding, which kind of sounds gross at first.  But it's awesome.  Andrew and I split the honey graham flavor with some homemade whipped cream on top.  Um, yes please.

My actual birthday (Thursday) was pretty chill.  I slept late (which was awesome because I was super tired from the company picnic) and then I worked until like 9:00.  Several of my very sweet co-workers offered to take me out after work, but we all knew that we really just wanted to go home and go to bed.  So we did.  I got a couple of nice surprises at work.  My sister Kristi and my best friend Shahla sent me an Edible Arrangement.  My co-workers and I tore that up.  SO good.

That empty tupperware container used to have some brownies in it from my sweet friend Kathleen, but I took care of those too.

And just when I thought my day couldn't get any sweeter (in the literal sense), as I'm walking past the elevators at the end of my lunch break, I hear a familiar voice.  It's Leticia, holding a box from...

full of...

She trekked all the way up to my midtown office to bring them to me!  So amazing.

I forgot to mention that my mom and dad, upon hearing my complaints that I could not find any chocolate almond bark here in NY, sent me this in the mail.

This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but it was the BEST gift I could have gotten.  It is SO hard to make oreo/cream cheese balls without good almond bark.  And apparently it's trans fat free - so it's a healthy snack!  Haha.

So, needless to say, between all these yummy treats, lots of calls, texts, Facebook wall shout-outs, tweets, cards, and packages (and several lovely renditions of "Happy Birthday", both live and via voice message), I felt very loved.  This is my first birthday to be so far away from most of the family and friends I usually celebrate with, but it turned out to be out of the most amazing I've had (sorry this post is so superlative-heavy...it's been an exceptionally good month...haha).

And finally, something that happened just last night/this morning...

It's about 1:00 in the morning.  I'm sitting on the L train heading back home.  At this point in the night, the trains are still pretty crowded, but you have a pretty wide variety of folks onboard.  There is almost always at least one homeless person camped out taking up like half the bench (not cool, by the way, homeless people).  My car had a very loud and interesting guy on this particular night/morning.  Every 10-15 seconds or so, he would just scream.  Not words, just screams.  He was clearly getting irritated with all of us.  For what, I don't know.  I guess our very existence was annoying him.  Since I was sitting closest to him (bad call on my part), that fool starts trying to kick me.  And actually somewhat succeeded before I jumped out of the way.  This set off a whole chain of events, the first being that this guy sitting across from me jumped to my defense and starting screaming and swearing at the homeless guy.  There was some more things that happened over the course of the next few minutes, but the end of the story is that the homeless guy got punched in the face and passed back out on the bench.  I'm not sure how much of this was because he got punched and how much was because he was already pretty intoxicated to begin with.  Either way, I got on a different train.

See what fun you guys with cars are missing out on?  The joys of public transportation are boundless.

Ok, this is getting a little lengthy (see, at least when I go a month without posting, I make up for it!), so I will wrap up with one last thing.  Since you only have six more months to get your Christmas music ready (or like 3-4 months if you're me), I thought I would make some suggestions.  Here are my top 5 Christmas albums, in no particular order.

Mariah Carey - Merry Christmas

Nothing makes me happier than "All I Want For Christmas Is You."  And her version of "Joy To The World" is ridiculous.

Straight No Chaser - Holiday Spirits

These guys are an incredible, 10-member acapella group.  I saw them live for the first time last year and I can't wait to catch them again.  Favorite track on the album has got to be their live version of "The 12 Days of Christmas"

Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas

This is a box set with tons of great songs...hard to even pick a favorite on this one, but I would probably go with "That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!" or "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!"

Point of Grace - A Christmas Story

These ladies have some sick harmonies.  Plus, this album always reminds me of TBCH because we sang "When Love Came Down" and "Not That Far From Bethlehem" with the kids' choirs. 

The Maybe This Christmas Series

I am counting this as one even though it's technically three.  These CD's really bring out the hipster in me.  Haha.  Where else could you find Christmas music by Death Cab, Ben Folds, Ron Sexsmith, Phantom Planet, Copeland, Barenaked Ladies, The Flaming Lips, and Pedro the Lion?  Doesn't get any better.

Wow, I hope you guys made it to the end. I'd hate for you to have missed out on the hipster Christmas music section.  :-)  

Much Love.