Astronauts and Nutcrackers.

This month so far has been pretty fun. I was in Alabama Youth Ballet's production of The Nutcracker: A Yuletide Ballet, I did some Christmas decorating, and I met another astronaut!

I decided to do The Nutcracker with Sarah. We auditioned in August and started rehearsals in early September. She reprised her role as the maid, and I was in Act II, in the Arabian scene. I wasn't really sure what to expect, as it is a children's play, but I was pleasantly surprised to find several adults- including 5 other people older than 23 in my scene! The show was fun and exhausting, and I'm hoping to get a few pictures from Sarah soon. Here are the two that I have.

On opening night, Husband came to our show and

brought me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers!

Tom and Diana came to support Sarah and I the following night

and so graciously gave us these gorgeous flowers!

For real, I got more flowers last weekend than I think I have ever.

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Now here's a photo of the few Christmas decorations I have:

Ornaments displayed on our mantle, a paint-chip Christmas tree

taped up to the wall, and three stockings. The third is for Puppy!

Since we won't be in town for Christmas this year, we decided to not get a tree, real or fake, and I instead decided to get a little crafty. All it took was a trip to Lowe's to pick up a paint chip in every green shade they had (as well as one orange one, for the topper, and a brown one for the trunk). I put out our tree skirt (per Tom's request), and put our gifts under our tree.

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And now: my astronauts. One of the two below I met in November- before Thanksgiving. His name is Owen Garriott and my picture with him was in the Marshall Star weekly newspaper.

Astronaut Owen Garriott is 83 years old! His first space flight was in 1973 on Skylab 3, and set a world record for a duration of about 60 days in space. His second space flight was on the shuttle Columbia in 1983 for Spacelab-3.

My second recent astronaut meeting was Astronaut TJ Creamer. In December 2009, TJ Creamer launched to the International Space Station to start his 6-month duration aboard during Expeditions 22/23. After returning to Earth, he became a Payload Operations Director at the HOSC, where I work. I met him yesterday at the NASA Holiday celebration, and I'll be working real-time with him Monday and Thursday of next week!

Me with Astronaut TJ Creamer. He was busy signing a head shot for me!