Merry Christmas!

Christmas this year was delighful as usual. The only regret for everyone is that Alice was missing, and that we weren't on the Beach in Australia to hang out with her! We did our usual name-drawing on Thanksgiving and exchanged sister gifts Christmas Eve. I made photo albums for all the sisters for Christmas day. The took forever, so I hope they like them! :) Most of my gifts were hand-made or photographs this year... sorry--I'm broke.

It's wonderful having Grandpa here--he stays about two or three weeks every year. There's always laughter in his presence--actually, I can say that for the whole Droney family.

I've been sleeping in till at least 10:30 every morning... pretty much. Except for yesterday because I had a breakfast date (aren't breakfast dates fantastic? You HAVE to wake up early and get your day started. If I'm not meeting someone, I'll go ahead and sleep in. Call me and set up a breakfast date with me, now!). I say I'm still recuperating from this year's record high of all-nighters. I think I pulled one every other week--but you'd think I'd have recovered by now.

Other than sleeping in, I've been catching up with friends I haven't seen in ages: like Joy from Yellowstone! I saw her in Atlanta last week with her fiancee and his family, and our friend Ben from Asheville. And I saw Hannah, too! She got back from L'Abri the other week. I met her adorable Swedish boyfriend and went contra dancing with her family, whom I'm adopting as my own :). They don't know that yet. Also, Gideon (Alice's friend) came by two nights ago with Alice on the other end of his cell phone! We got to talk to her for a good while and catch up with Gideon, who's hoping to become and army ranger. That boy is HARD-CORE. He told us stories from his training that kind of opened up another world for me. I love when that happens--but the military is serious business; I love being exposed to a "new world," but a lot of his stories would be considered horrific to us (ie: non-military people). About a month ago I meant to blog about my new appreciation for the military after watching the opening clip of "Saving Private Ryan" in history class (US history 1919-1945) and reading "A Democracy at War"--a new favorite. Watch "Saving Private Ryan" and realize that the invasion of Normandy was pretty accurately depicted. Seasickness from a torrential storm. People dying before they'd even reached land. I have to say, WWII wasn't morally ambiguous. A point the book we read brought up was that if Nazi Germany had won the war, we'd be in the Dark Ages for a thousand years. The Holocaust would have continued. Normandy saved us. I am so deeply appreciative for our veterans.

Read up on the GI Bill, too and thank the American Legion your grandpa went to college (mine did because of it, anyway). That's a fascinating, indebting story. I'll tell you about it later, when you're older ;).