I’ve known both these chicas online for…oh, nearly three years now! I met Bex and Jo both during 7 Days in March 2007. Bex and Jo are best friends in real life, and I quickly realized that they both were silly, geeky, smart, warm-hearted people whom I’d love to hang out and bake cupcakes and watch movies with. Since they live in Alabama I had to settle for writing emails and Flickr comments (and assigning the odd baking project), hoping we’d get the chance to meet someday.

When I realized that our route across the country was going to be taking us through Alabama, I emailed Bex and Jo and asked if they would be willing to meet up with us in Decatur. They both arranged their work schedules accordingly and we exchanged dorkily excited text messages as our meet-up drew closer. We arranged a location to meet and coincidentally parked our cars right next to each other.

From the moment we attack-hugged each other in greeting, all through dinner at an amazing Asian restaurant and coffee at Starbucks, it was awesome. It was so wonderful to meet these friends in real life, finally, and to confirm what we’ve been pretty sure of all along.

Silly people really do make the best friends, online and in real life.

(1st photo and last 2 photos taken by my mom, who was with us but forgot to get in any of the photos herself)

Or at the very least, I dented it and some paint got scraped off. I was trying to delete two things from my sidebar—two itty-bitty nonessential pieces of code, honestly—and somehow I broke my theme. Then my blog disappeared. Aaaaaccckkk!

UPDATED: OMSH fixed it for me because she is a web genius and wonderful friend. Thank you so much, Heather!

I poked around a bit and figured out how to bring my blog back (whew!) but not the pretty theme. Which means my photos are all squished and my awesome Chuck banner that Brenda made for me isn’t up (boohoo!) and several other things are missing as well. I don’t want to poke around any more right now for two reasons: I might make it worse, and it’s after midnight and I have to get up early in the morning so we can go to the zoo. If I start tinkering now I could accidentally stay up till 4am trying to fix my mistake.

For now, I’m going to bed and hoping I’ll figure this all out tomorrow or the next day. In the meanwhile, if you want to see photos of the awesome International 7 Days Meet-Up we had yesterday in Lauren’s honor with Summer, Katie, Elaine, Bonnie & Brenda (Sonja and Jen couldn’t make it but we’re seeing them Tuesday), click the photo for the set.

Omaha got its first significant snowfall on Christmas Day since 1941 this year, with about 12 inches of snow! It’s magical and all, but the city is pretty much shut down. Many flights out of Omaha were cancelled today, which makes me nervous because we’re supposed to fly home tomorrow, and I have to pick up a certain Australian at the airport in L.A. on Monday.

I know it’ll all work out, but I really hope our flight doesn’t get cancelled. Flying at Christmastime is crazy enough without adding cancelled flights to the mix on top of the added security we’ll have because of that guy who attempted to blow up a flight to Detroit. I’m very thankful that my mom is coming home with us for a short visit so it won’t be just me and Annalie navigating the insanity at the airports.

Don’t mind me, I’m just being a tiny bit Scrooge-ish because it was a weird day. Christmas worship was cancelled, the city was snowed in, and I was missing Troy extra today. But even with all that it was a good day. Annalie had a blast opening and playing with her presents. We watched movies and lounged in our pajamas and ate too many cookies. I made another big batch of sugar-and-spice candied nuts, and homemade mac & cheese for dinner.

And I finished the babette! In a stroke of serendipity, I had just enough black yarn to do a border. I wish I could give the blanket to Ben and Angie in person but with the snow and us leaving tomorrow that’s not likely. I’ll just wash it, wrap it, and leave it here for them to pick up once the roads are clear.