Whirlwind Holiday Season...

At the F-o-u-r Seasons for a "Holiday Hop" organized by a friend.

I'll admit it.... I am EXHAUSTED from the holidays! I feel like I was running constantly in December. Between work, trying to get in to the gym and holiday parties, I had very little down time during the entire month. It was a lot of fun, but it wore me out!! Hence the lack of blogging during that time.

For Christmas, my mom came up to NYC for a ten day stay. One of the highlights was our trip out to Steve's parents' house so that she could meet his family. The three of them hit it off instantly, and we had a ball! It really went much better than I'd even dared to hope!! So, that was not only a huge relief (because while you expect the best, ya never know!), but also a lot of fun.

With Steve and a zillion others at the P--ar-k Ave-nue Tre-e Lig-h-ti-ng

At Steve's dad's annual Game Dinner (they serve game, as opposed to playing games... P.S. game is not the easiest thing for a bandster to eat....I was SO CAREFUL at that meal!)

Another highlight of the Christmas season was that the lovely Bahamas-dwelling Jessica sent me my second Sisterhood care package!!! It was full of lovely things like jeans, jackets, a cute sweater and a really adorable sun dress! My camera hasn't been working properly, so I'm having trouble uploading photos -- I hope to get it working soon so I can show you photos! That said, a few things were too big for me, so I'd love to pass them on to other bandsters -- I'll post photos as soon as I can.

My Sisterhood Package from Jessica from Island Bandit!

Another highlight of Christmas was getting to have dinner with Nora, her husband and my mother! We went to a fabulous restaurant called Gr--a-m-m-e-r-cy T-a-v-e-r-n, and Nora and Kenny brought some incredible wine from their collection for us to enjoy. It added so much to our enjoyment of the meal and that beautiful restaurant! And, it was wonderful to get to see how AMAZING Nora is looking -- she is more than 100 pounds down from the first time we met, and she just looked incredible!! It was really nice to get to meet Kenny, too. I felt like I already knew him from Nora's e-mails and blog posts, and he and my mom really hit it off, too. (Nora... I have GOT to get that photo from my mom!!)

And, finally, a group of us is getting together an NYC bandster brunch on January 21st. If you would like to go, you can e-mail me at chroniclesfrombandland (-at-) gmail (-dot-) com and I'll send you the details. Looking forward to seeing everyone!