The most important family member

It has been requested (if I gave you two guesses by whom, I'm sure you'd be right!) that I post a picture of Lulu with our Christmas tree. I contemplated this before posting the ornament post but honestly, I had only wrapped the gifts at that point and they didn't have bows yet. I am certainly my mother's daughter, and I wouldn't dare show our full tree with ribbon-less gifts, so after finishing the bows last night I snapped these photos.

Note that I was waking Lulu from what apparently was a very comfortable slumber in our big chair, though I'm not sure how it's comfortable to lay at almost a 90 degree angle.









Then I put her jingle bell collar on, which made her even more grouchy....












After a few minutes and promises of a treat, she perked up!

A glimpse into the past

In the spirit of Christmas and our new pre-lit Christmas tree, I want to highlight some of our favorite ornaments in our growing collection of Christmas decor.

Blake's parents gave him this hand-painted ornament of his first house. The details are amazing! Note the lack of landscaping... the picture that the artist used was clearly taken after they had every bit of overgrown vegetation removed, and before I came along! I love this idea and am hoping that Santa brings a similar ornament of our new house!














We received the next two wedding-esque ornaments at bridal showers, and I just think they are so cute. The little bride and groom bells were part of the bow on a gift - so creative!















Keeping with the wedding theme of 2009, we received a set of Inge-Glas German ornaments. This was my favorite of the few off-registry gifts we received! I love that every year when we put these dozen-or-so ornaments on the tree, we'll be reminded of our friends who gave them to us and I hope these are ornaments that we are able to pass down to future generations of Koriaths. Plus, they're super-glittery, which I love! Santa looks a little creepy but they're all really pretty, believe me.

Blake's mom is an excellent collector, specifically of White House commemorative ornaments and rocking horses. She gave us the entire collection of White House ornaments since 1980 and a handful of his rocking horses. We didn't put them all on the tree this year, though.





















Last, but certainly not least, I want to showcase some of Blake's fine artistic abilities from his younger years. Our tree is prominently featuring his talents with glitter back in 1983 as well as his paper mache abilities with a bear that just rests between branches. Maybe next year I'll dig up some of my handcrafted ornaments!





































Admittedly, we opted not to do Christmas cards this year (despite being given lots of grief considering that we got married AND bought a new house), but we've loved receiving lots of cards from friends! Hopefully, this blog post has given you a little glimpse into the Christmas spirit in our home, though, and we wish all of you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Difference #491 between Naptown and the City That Never Sleeps

As you probably know, I recently completed a 12-week sabbatical from Eli Lilly and Company to work for the United Way of Central Indiana. It was an incredible experience and I'm so thankful that I was chosen to participate! (Rather than repeating what I've already written, if you want to read more about it, you can read a blog I wrote last week on the LiveUnitedGiveUnited blog.) I came back to Lilly and much has changed here in only 12 weeks, including my own work environment. Let's just say I wasn't very happy at my previous desk for a variety of reasons so I voluntarily signed up to "go mobile", meaning I don't actually have a desk of my own anymore and instead have a locker. Yes, a locker. Thankfully, these don't have a combination that will cause me to have nightmares about forgetting how to get into my locker to get my books and instead just have a normal key, but it's a three-part locker to store my belongings while I'm out and about all day. There are a few "mobile work areas" for the other people like me, and we just roam around until we find a suitable desk. Many people are totally freaked out by this concept but I think I'll actually really like it.

Given my new locker location within this small city that is the Lilly Corporate Center, I've been working on the optimal parking arrangements, which brings me to the title of this post. The place I think will work best for me is a large parking garage, and to enter the building, you actually cross under Delaware Street and take a 2-story escalator up to the main lobby... you know, kind of like the ones you see in New York or other big cities coming up from the subway. However, the Lilly escalators have two very entertaining signs that make them very different from the big city ones: one says "Do not rush other passengers" and the other something like "No walking or running". As a person who likes to get where I'm going quickly, I just find these signs entertaining, and they are clearly a sign of (1) Midwestern values of "just take your time" and (2) working for a company that, understandably, doesn't like accidents in the workplace. (Urban legend says there is a "citizens arrest"-like policy if you see someone walking up or down stairs without holding the handrail, but I've never experienced that in real life.) I'm thinking I may need to dig up my old Woodbrook Crossing Guard uniform and be the Escalator Police for next Halloween, but my friends in Health & Safety might not be so amused.