So, a while ago, Pearson and I decided to spend our first married Christmas at home, just us. If we were going to see family over the holidays, it would be after Christmas. Well… we were in Georgia this week… BUT, we ended up back home for Christmas eve and day, so don’t you worry about that.
The company I work for had an office Christmas party on Wednesday and wanted me to be in town for it. (For those of you who don’t know, I still work for a company in Georgia while living in Ohio. I telecommute all the way to Georgia every day from my spare bedroom in my Dublin apartment 😛 ). Anyway, my manager convinced me to come to the party so Pearson and I made the 9 hour drive on Saturday the 15th and stayed all week. I went into work every weekday so it wasn’t much of a vacation for me, but it was a fun change of scenery nonetheless.
So having worked in the office from January to August of 2012 and then working remote from home in Ohio ever since then, coming back into the office was sort of… strange, for lack of a better word. First of all, the department I work for had hired 3 new people since I left, including a manager, none of which I had ever met in person. This was interesting because adding new people changes the whole dynamic of a team like ours (all good changes I found) and I hadn’t really been able to see all the changes from Ohio over the phone and internet. However, everyone seemed so excited to see me and have me back in the office. It was a great feeling 🙂 As I mentioned earlier, we had our office Christmas party on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoy working for this fantastic company. The people are great. We are very successful and constantly growing even in this not-so-great economy. And though it is a secular company, it is run by people with great morals and standards. We started lunch at the party with a prayer and God was mentioned in a lot of the speeches. After lunch we played games, had door prizes and just goofed off for a while. It was a wonderful first experience of an office Christmas party.
Other than work though, it was fun to be “home” for a while. Back to Buford church of Christ. Back to the Mall of Georgia. Back to Lake Lanier Islands. Back with friends. And especially, back with family. It was a nice refresher. Pearson and I enjoyed shopping and visiting some places that were important to is in our Georgia dating days. And my dad even pulled out some old VHS videos of me and my brother growing up. It is always so fun to reminisce whether it is just thinking back a few years or 20 years, and Pearson got to see some funny videos of his wife as a 2-year-old.
On the first Saturday when we got there, Pearson and I went to a Christmas party for the young professionals at Buford church. It was so nice to see everyone and we fit right in like we never left. We did the usual Christmas party games and had a gift exchange. It was so energizing to see old faces and hug some friends we hadn’t seen in several months.
On Tuesday we had Christmas with my grandparents. They loved pretended to like their Ohio State hoodies. Ok, Memaw loved it but Pepaw just kept joking about it. We will see if he actually ever wears it.
On Wednesday we had Christmas with my parents and Tyler. Everybody was impressed with their gifts and they surprised us with a… wait for it…. vinyl record turn-table! I was so excited! I mentioned once that it would be cool to have one and my parents surprised us. It can record from vinyl and cassette to CD which is fantastic!
On Thursday one of my best friends, Kellum, came to Atlanta and we went to Lake Lanier Islands Magical Night of Lights. It was a lot of fun just goofing off like old times.
We stayed Friday and Saturday night with Pearson’s family. On Friday we made cookies and Saturday evening we had Christmas. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing after working all week. I finally actually got a vacation. We literally laid around and did nothing but watch movies all day on Saturday. And they gave us a new 39 inch TV (which we knew about- but it was still exciting).
All in all, it was a great week even if it wasn’t how we had been planning for our first Christmas to go since we got married. It was fantastic and I wouldn’t trade my family and friends for the world. I am truly a very blessed lady.
Thanks for reading.
Mrs. Charlene Maugeri <–That never gets old.
