Practice What You Teach

Over Christmas break, I mailed in my application for a passport. Starting the day after I got back to school, I began faithfully checking my mailbox every single day for that little booklet that would grant me access to England, France, Scotland, and Wales. I mean, I knew it would take a few weeks, but I was holding out hope that my passport application was somehow just so wonderful that the process would be sped up. After weeks of endless let-downs my enthusiasm maybe only slightly faded. I still checked the mail every day, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I would have to wait for weeks on end. This weekend was my roommate Alyssa's birthday, and on Saturday night we were having a party at our apartment. Our mail generally comes around 4:00, but the afternoon passed in such a blur of grocery shopping, cleaning, and baking that I realized five minutes before our friends were coming that I had neglected my daily trip to the mailbox. I figured that since I had to take the

1. Outings with the family . I just love that there is so much to do in DC around Christmastime. We went and saw Christmas lights, drove to D.C. to see the National Christmas Tree which in Jenn's opinion was in a word "underwhelming," went after Christmas shopping and got some incredible deals like a pair of heels that was originally $80 for $23, drove up to the DC Temple to see the lights where I ran into my good friend Anna who's serving as a missionary there, and went to the National Harbor to see the gorgeous Christmas decorations and explore the harbor and all of the cute shops. 2. Christmas lights with the Buhlers. It's become a yearly tradition to go on a Christmasy outing with our good friends the Buhlers over break. This year, we went out to dinner at Cici's, and definitely became the most exciting table in the restaurant. We seem to attract a lot of attention when our two families go out in public together! Then we went to see the dr