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.