Xanga has been really annoying me of late, so I'm switching all my blogging over to http://newfangledmusings.wordpress.com/ . I love Wordpress's interface and CSS designs . . . perhaps someday I'll even chip in the $15 it takes for custom CSS! Wordpress is so much classier and easier to use than Xanga, so so long, Xanga, and all of your annoying ads! I do apologize to all of you that use Xanga to track blogs you read - perhaps, may I suggest, you could try out Google Reader? *grin* I'll still be commenting on and reading all of the other blogs over here, have no fear.

And as bait, I'm going to hopefully post over there tomorrow on what I've been up do of late and why I've been strangely silent. I have a good reason, honestly! 

'Twas lovely! I very much enjoyed myself. We met up with Nona in Purdy and I rode down to the AI meeting at Nisqually with her. That was loads of fun - I hadn't been to Nisqually before! Meeting all of the AIs was lovely and we had a grand time dancing afterwards. I learned several new dances, a score for me! Including what you all might remember as the "Mr. Collin's Dance" - The Comical Fellow. So much fun! The interior of the fort is all muddy right now because they're building two new much needed buildings there.

After hanging out at Nisqually for a while, doing hair, etc, we headed down to Steilacoom. Laura, another one of the AIs rode down with us - four girls, all of their gear, hoopskirts, carpet bags, etc - fit in the trunk of Nona's PT Cruiser! *giggles* Once we got there, all of the girls congregated in the Casey girl's bedroom as we got dressed, did loads of hair, jury rigged dresses, and had a grand time lighting up the room with lots of candles. Nona and Anna were stationed as the Casey sisters and Cassie, Ava, Monica, Melissa and I were in the dance scene - as Miss Bella and Helena English, Miss Mary, Miss Prescott and Miss Johnson, respectively. Tehe. A grand time was had by all! Two wonderful fiddlers played the night away for us, and I loved preforming/acting for people who we could wholeheartedly ignore! The way this event was run was that we're not to notice the guests and they aren't out to make contact with us - just to watch. It was so much fun dancing the night away and talking about bits and pieces of period things afterwards. We sang Christmas carols after a while - which was awesome fun because for a random group of people thrown together, we were pretty darn good! Two or three of the guys sang harmony exclusively, as well as some of the girls, and we had a nice balance of sopranos and altos. Sounded so lovely!

And after the final wrap up was done we went back up to the Casey's brothers, changed back to our day dresses or modern clothes, and had a grand ol time scheming on a new reenactment idea . . . which you might hear more about in the future.

The Boothmans left this afternoon at about 12:30. It was absolutely tremendous fun, even though we're all now exhausted.

Thursday morning we finished cleaning the house and finishing getting all of the cooking done. They were supposed to arrive here around noon, but eventually arrived at 1:00, after running into traffic into Tacoma. It ended up all being good, though, since we still had to wait a bit for the turkey to finish cooking. We ate around 2:00, and had a grand time. So much food, and it was so good! After cleaning up, we sat around and had a bit of dinner, just snacking on the two gallons of party mix my mum made. Dessert at the Ryans was slated for 6:00, so we headed out to Seabeck at about 5:30. It was so much fun! A lot of the people I hadn't seen in years, so it was fun talking with them and hanging out. After dessert was over, and the littler kids were done playing outside and the big kids done playing games inside, we sang Christmas carols, which was very cool. Upon getting home at 10:30, we played Speed Scrabble almost until midnight.

On Friday, we hung out during the morning and basically lazed around. The best kind of morning-after-big-day type of lazing around. As it was Peter's 19th birthday, Neil (not a Boothman, but spending Thanksgiving with them because his family's house had a tree land on it!) took us to Walmart to shop . . it ended being up 12 people with 8 of them being under the age of 13. Quite the undertaking. It was fun all splitting up, taking a buddy and getting presents. Kate, Hilary and Jane went out with the Ryans for a run out in Seabeck, and by the time they got back all of the presents were wrapped. We watched Ratatouille that evening, then had dinner, then watched a Boothman Thanksgiving classic - Taming of the Shrew, staring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Which was hilarious, by the way. Tessie May (friend of the cousins who lives very near here) came over and spent the night as well. Speed Scrabble was again played, until almost past midnight.

We had a slow morning this morning . . . packing up all of their stuff into a 15 passenger van was an adventure, especially since they had to have 14 people in there! Hilary and Jane are staying with Tessie tonight, and going over to Seattle to run the Half Marathon early tomorrow morning.

Here are the best of the pictures that were taken . . . enjoy!