New Year's Eve

Today's Beautiful Thing is New Year's Eve. I love that 2009 is coming to an end and 2010 is ready to begin. We have a fresh new year ahead of us, ripe with promise.

Bonus Beautiful Thing: Happy Birthday Aunt Ann! I love you!

Oh, Happy Day!

Today's Beautiful Thing is my sister Katie. It's her 31st Birthday today. Happy Birthday Katie! I love you. xoxo...

Late Night

Today's Beautiful Thing is Lopez Tonight. It's our first time watching it. Great show!

Dinner Out on a Weeknight

Today's Beautiful Thing is having dinner out with the hubby on a weeknight--something we don't often do. Thank you Aunt Ann for the Rubio's gift card. :)

Cuddling Up

Today's Beautiful Thing is cuddling up under the blanket my cousin made us for Christmas enjoying Inglorious Bastards. It's been a lazy kind of Sunday--the best kind!

Tamales!

Today's Beautiful Thing is a dinner of tamales made my my mother-in-law. She's always so good about sending some home with us. Yum!

Christmas

Today's Beautiful Thing is Christmas. It's my favorite holiday of the year. Even though I didn't get to spend it with my side of the family, I still had a great time.

Christmas Eve

Today's Beautiful Thing is celebrating Christmas Eve with my family. It's a new thing for us, but I'm learning to enjoy it now that it's our thing. I love my family.

Teamwork

Today's Beautiful Thing is working together. The hubby helped me wrap presents until the wee hours of the morning. Thankfully, it all got done. Thanks honey!

The Perfect Gift

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting my father-in-law exactly what he wanted. I'm so glad my mother-in-law came up with a good idea for us. He deserves it!

Integrity-Quest

Today's Beautiful Thing is doing the right thing even though we didn't have to. A friend commented that we were the only people he knew who did what we did in the situation and that made us feel good. :)

Helpful Hubby

Today's Beautiful Thing is help. The hubby helped me shop all day today. I can't belive it's the last day off I have before Christmas Eve! Eeek!

Ideas

Today's Beautiful Thing is coming up with a gameplan for our Christmas shopping. We have some good ideas to take care of the rest of our list. Finally! :)

Holiday Lunch

Today's Beautiful Thing is lunch with the Finance girls. We had a lovely time at the Claim Jumper. :)

They Say it's Your Birthday....

Today's Beautiful Thing is my sisters' birthday! Happy 33rd Birthday Amy & Sarah. I love you. Mwuah!
(Sarah's in the middle and Amy's on the right. Katie is on the left.)

The Little Things

Today's Beautiful Thing is a successful check run with a minimal mistakes. Sometimes it's the little things I appreciate the most. :)

Holiday Gifties

Today's Beautiful Thing is a box full of gourmet cookies and brownies from a vendor. Mmmm!

Splurging

Today's Beautiful Thing is dinner with the hubby. We ate our favorite combo of taquitos, a tostada & a taco--all fried. I couldn't eat this way every day, but once in a while, you just gotta! :)

One for Me, One for You...

Today's Beautiful Thing is finding stuff for myself while I'm out Christmas shopping! :)

Family Fun

Today's Beautiful Thing is my big, crazy Italian family. We had a fantastic night at Sheri's house.

Heroes

Today's Beautiful Thing is adoption. My cousin and her husband just found out they were approved to adopt two sisters. The adoption won't be final till February, but today is still a day for celebration. To me, they are heroes. Anyone can make a kid, but only a special few choose to adopt. Bless them. (Note: These are not their kids, just a cute pic I found on the net.)

Being Appreciated

Today's Beautiful Thing is appreciation. I won an award at work this afternoon and I SO wasn't expecting it. Wow! It sure made me feel good. :) Color me happy.

Lucky

Today's Beautiful Thing is having a wonderful husband to come home to after a long, stressful day. Abner is my shelter and I will always do my best to never take him for granted.

Warm

Today's Beautiful Thing is a non-fat, upside down caramel macchiato from Starbucks. What a treat!

Breaking Dawn

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting to work bright and early. I get so much more work done when I do! :)

Free Stuff

Today's Beautiful Thing is the $60.00 in Kohl's Cash I earned doing my Christmas shopping last weekend. This weekend I redeamed them for a sweater dress, a blouse, and a pair of plaid pants. Yay!

Cute

Today's Beautiful Thing is finding cute gifties for all the girls at work. Yay!

Ahead of the Game

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting all my work done. I thought I'd be behind, but I totally wasn't. I even had extra time to learn how to do something new. Yay!

Abner

Today's Beautiful Thing is doing something nice for yourself. Yay honey!

Mr. Postman

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting checks ready to mail before the mailman gets here. It's a silly thing, but it makes me happy.

Advent

Today's Beautiful Thing is advent calendars. I gave one to my niece Elise because I remember how much fun I had with them every year when my grandma bought them for me. :)

Bonus Beautiful Thing: It's my aunt Toni's birthday. She's one of my favorite people in the world!

Special Day

Today's Beautiful Thing is Little Abner's first birthday. Happy Birthday to a very special little guy!

First Steps

Today's Beautiful Thing is our friends P & V's son A taking his first steps. Could he really be almost a year old already? Time sure flies. Yay for little Abner!

Super Shopping

Today's Beautiful Thing is crossing a bunch of people off my Christimas list. Mom and I had a 10 hour shopping spree. Wheeee!

Black Friday Thankfulness

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting a super deal on a 50" TV and not having to wait in line to get it. Bonus Beautiful Thing: Our nice neighbors who lent us their van so we could take it home. Life is good.

Thanksgiving Thankfulness

Today's Beautiful Thing is Thanksgiving with my family. We took my mom to my mother-in-law's for Thanksgiving this year and we all had a great time. I can't believe my niece is already 4 years old. When did that happen?

4 Days

Today's Beautiful Thing is looking forward to a 4 day weekend. It's been way too long since I've had 4 days odd in a row. Yeah!

Yummy

Today's Beautiful Thing is a pot luck at work. It's a simple thing, but it's fun. Lunch was really yummy. :)

Oh Boy!

Today's Beautiful Thing is finding out my cousin had her baby on Saturday while I was having a blast at the beach house with my girls. Congrats to my cousin Staci & her hubby Brandon and Happy Birthday little Hunter Sean.

Sunrise

Today's Beautiful Thing is spending the morning drinking hot tea and gabbing with my friends until it was time to take the long drive south toward home. We had the best time.

Beachy

Today's Beautiful Thing is spending a day playing tourist in a cute little beach town with my friends. It was just lovely.
(Pictured: Pat & Michele at the butterfly garden.)

The Girls Pt II

Today's Beautiful Thing is a weekend with my pals. We're gonna talk writing all weekend long. What could be better than that? :)

The Girls

Today's Beautiful Thing is meeting the girls from work at the movies. We're off to see New Moon! Go Team Jacob! :)

Catch Up

Today's Beautiful Thing is catching up on Beautiful Things. Sometimes I get behind, but now I'm all caught up. I feel great! Yeah!

Without a Hitch

Today's Beautiful Thing is doing the weekly check run and having zero mistakes or problems. Especially with the amount of checks this time. Thanks to T & M for their help and cooporation. Yeah!

Friends

Today's Beautiful Thing is having a nice visit with a friend. We've been getting to know TWB for a few months now and he's such a nice guy. Has a great family too.

Laziness

Today's Beautiful Thing is sleeping in, running and errand or two and relaxing with the hubby and the pups. Sometimes you just gotta

Busy!

Today's Beautiful Thing is getting a lot done. I have a couple of busy weeks ahead of me, so getting stuff done early is a must.

Friday the 13th

Today's Beautiful Thing is Friday the 13th. They don't come around very often and I think they're pretty cool. :)