it seems to me that most of us are living precisely the lives we want to live. we just don’t realize it.

The subject line comes from a fabulous conclusion to a woman's tumblr post that i have reread a couple of times over the last few days. I love it. If you want to read it, click here.

Now, I haven't updated this with stories or pictures in awhile. I hear it. "Geez, Janae. Thinking you can go off and have winter break and not update anyone on anything you are doing." I did have a couple people from closer to where I'm from say that ever since I'd been back I hadn't been blogging. The truth is, I'm not sure what I did over break is really that interesting. But, here goes nothing.

(By the way, I LOVE when at the end of sit-coms, the characters sit down and say "the truth is..." and the dramatic culmination-to-the-problem music comes on. It makes me sit back and chuckle everytime and I usually get a little feeling in the pit of my stomach that is triggering the THIS IS IMPORTANT notion that I should be paying attention even though I already was - but the truth is, this is what you were watching for in the first place. Get it together and remember this valuable, sound lesson, DJ Tanner. Or Stephanie. Or Michelle. Or Danny for that matter.)

Since I didn't get home for break until a few short days before Christmas, I'm going to start with Christmas Eve. It blizzarded. Is that a word? It is now. This year was the first year ever that I didn't spend Christmas Eve at my grandma and grandpa's farm, eating spaghetti (our family's tradition - with homemade sauce), devouring the best cookies ever that are only made at Christmastime (and that you can tell my grandpa frosted because of the extra red hots on top), and very un-patiently waiting until all of the dishes were cleaned up from dinner before we could open presents. It's a wonderful tradition and it didn't really feel like Christmas without it. We did have a make-up day, with all of the things I described above, but it wasn't quite the same. I think anyone who was snowed in on Christmas feels a little bit of the same way.

Christmas day came and my mom went alllllllllll out. In my immediate family we have started our own new tradition: re-Thanksgiving. Last year for Thanksgiving, my brother and I were both out of the country so we re-did it in January, on my birthday in fact. This year, my brother and his fiance both missed out, so we re-did Thanksgiving dinner on Christmas. No one was really allowed to drive anywhere because of the blizzard, but we have family that live a couple houses down from us and a few neighbors that feel like family, and they all came over for the feast. It was actually really nice and felt special in it's own way. And the fact that the day started out with my 25-year-old brother screaming at me to WAKE UP around 8:00 AM so we could open presents from SANTA just made the entire day funny. I didn't hear him at first - I can't remember what I thought he said through my sleepy coma but it was something ridiculous - and then I finally understood he was yelling "JANAE GET UP!" I rolled over, checked my phone, realized how early it was, thought to myself "Good Lord, Brian," dragged myself out of bed, threw on a sweatshirt and trudged downstairs to find everyone already in their respective positions patiently (or not so) waiting for me to join them so we could start dishing out the goods. It was just like it used to be when we were little, and Brian (the oldest of us) was as giddy as ever. I secretly hope this never changes, even though I know I made a few cracks at how he should grow up a little bit, considering he is getting married and graduating with a masters this year.

After Christmas I spent a large chunk of my time with my friend Ashley, watching Sex and the City (if you didn't read a couple posts below this, Santa gave me ALL of the seasons and if you bet we finished them, you would be correct), baking, pretending that I would actually go trudge through the snow to make it to other people's houses when the weather was too bad to drive in, actually driving my dad's pick-up to people's houses and being scared to death while doing so (I'm afraid of it for some reason...), BAKING, getting things ready for a sewing project and then realizing our sewing machine no longer works and hurting another in the process, wearing sweatpants day in and day out, meeting up with friends in other cities, READING, listening to all sorts of new music and burning CD's for friends, avoiding the internet, and going to Ashley's house and baking for her family. In short, it was wonderful.

What did you do? Leave me a comment (they are my favorite things to read) and let me know!

There are always more silly stories to share but I must get back to being productive for the day, so here's a song to send you on your way:

Listen to the all of the new Vampire Weekend album here.