My family has had a lot of good fortune lately. MY MOM BOUGHT A NEW CAR TODAY!  Its a really sexy car, its a ford fusion and brand new. This is so great, she desrves this so much. Merry Freaking Christmas right?!? And we are gonna give the Scion to Kyle… well at least until I get my license back, around March.

**this blog gets very Christmas lettery**

Everything has just been fucking excellent recently, grandma had some sweepstakes luck, which helped with getting the car. My friends are all home for Christmas, the winery is doing great, my mom is happy, jenny and kyle are well and its christmas time. I got the chance to hang out with some “old school” ARC people, including my good buddy Dustin York who powered through school and just graduated from CSU Long Beach.

Our tree was real pretty

We are going to do the Christmas the traditional Ritchie way, Chicken enchiladas for Christmas eve dinner, wake up Christmas day, open presents, have champagne and tea and coffee. Then we have mimosas and eggs Benedict and watch elf. But then were gonna change things up a bit, were gonna drive to my cousins Suzy’s place in San Francisco. She has a beautiful little townhouse in the heart of the Castro. Lots of family will be there. We have never really done a big family Christmas, its usually just the 4 of us. So that’s new. AND its my first Christmas with little kids! My cousin Mira is 2 and my new cousin Ash is 6 months. It’s gonna be real fun.

Then I will head back to Pleasanton or Hayward with Jenny or Kyle, work at the winery on Sunday and then join Maggie and Tim Muldoon for our yearly tradition of drinking beer and playing wii golf. Where me and Maggie will sing Islands in the Stream really loud over and over again to annoy Tim.

It has been a great month off of doing plays and I have wholeheartedly embraced the holiday spirit, and I was at least able to get my family presents this year.

Jenny took my Grandma and Mom out to the Rockettes Christmas show which they all enjoyed. She recently got her business license for

before the decorations....

her nannying, Jenny is a legit business owner now . Kyle has been working non stop at Any Mountain and at the winery. He is still living in Hayward with Alex and Tim. The winery will open its new tasting room in the next few weeks and were all real excited about it. My mom is still working for AT&T although she had to switch departments. Hey at least we didn’t move to Georgia like we thought we might have to. My mom is elated to have this new car and have everyone happy and healthy and home for the holidays. Grandma spends her time painting and drawing and watching god awful soap operas, she got a suprise visit my cousins Tom and Jody who drove all the way up here from LA just to surprise Grandma, super cool. And me? The usual, been doing a lot of plays, had a great year of theatre and just got my first lead! I work for the winery doing their webmaster stuff. I’m still a socialite lush of Sacramento but I am much more responsible these days, learned some lessons this year.

I’m usually much more emo and depressing around this time, but I have NOTHING to complain about right now. I’m happy to report that I am actually starting to do real good. I want everyone to know that I am extremely thankful for all the good fortune we have all

AFTER!

been having. I don’t have the words for how well Slaughterhouse 5 went or how over the moon I am about Blithe Spirit. It’s time to sit back with my family and be thankful and drink champagne and watch elf. I hope I get cool presents I haven’t been this excited about a Christmas in YEARS. Well I hope this blog finds you well. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

heres one of the cards I made

peace!

I picked up and got a criagslist ride share out to my sister Jenny’s place in Pleasanton, drank champagne and got ready. A few of our friends and our brother kyle met us up and we went to a few parties and the Livermore bars. Needless to say, we all got pretty trashed. Had a nice hangover day the next day watching How I met your Mother ALL DAY. and then go out again.

This time the Ritchie Kids went out to San Francisco and hit up bars in the Castro. Sadly, this was actually my like 4th day in a row of partying hard and my body couldn’t take it much more. I puked before I got on BART. And after. So we all just had one beer each and were pretty tame. But we walked around and got several great pictures of all the FANTASTIC COSTUMES! We called it a pretty early night but it was an awesome weekend.

Peace

It has been an eventful couple weeks. As You Like It opened, it has been so fun and a good experience. My brother and sister had their traditional birthday party. They rented out Red Feather winery in Livermore and had about 70 people come. It was a real good time, got to see a lot of people from high school or people I hadn’t seen in like 5 years. It was a trip. Got tipsy and stripped whilst hula hooping. The usual.

My grandma, mom, and I went to the Alameda county fair the next day I discovered my love for betting on horse racing. or maybe just because it reminds me of The Hold Steady song Chips Ahoy. (video sucks though).

My motivation to get a job has been sullied to do my illness, going out of town, being in a play, and having so much terrible television on. I can only blame myself and I do. But I actually have been applying and interviewing for jobs. Some promising prospects.

Other than that I have been going to the river, working on my tan, and making peace with myself. I’m doing a lot better than usual. I feel great. My Mom and Grandma went away for a weekend and it gave me good time to reconnect with Bryce Marck, Matt Marr, and John Farnsworth. One of those times when you just realize why you are friends with certain people and not as much with other people. When it’s sunrise and we all need to get up to go feed horses, and we don’t mind cause were all doing it. Then we pick up a 24 pack of PBR at 7am, naturally.

Love life is what it always is. Really the EXACT SAME. Was thinking about Jeff for a second again, and than no. Again. Frank Fox made his way up here again, and that was nice. But who knows what that could be. Had a crush on someone for once but of course got passed up for a strait guy. Naturally. Back to square one. …Ladies?

I gotta go shower and get for my show tonight… jebus..

Peace

I leave you with Sufjan Steven’s cover of Joni Mitchel’s Free Man In Paris.

Went to SoCal last week to go pick up my Grandma and take her home with us to stay for a couple weeks and have Christmas and new years with us. It has been very chill, lots of food, watching elf, watching Christmas movies, and just hanging out.

I got some sweet presents too. I got an Itouch(I have gone wayyyy too long with out an ipod), a nice coach wallet, some movies, some CDs, some money. Oh and my sister got me a ridiculous huge canvas mounted print of myself from the body paint shoot I did with Terri. lol.

Here’s pictures of our tree and decorations and such. The white tree is my sisters tree. She has always wanted a flocked tree, but we never let her get one and then her boyfriend of 5 years never let her get one. Now she lives on her own and can get whatever tacky decorations she wants. I’m actually pretty proud. Not only does it have fake snow on it. Its is sparkling and glittery and covered in pink lights. Perfect.

Happy Christmas you guys!

**this marks one year exactly since I redid the website completely yay!!

peace

The Ritchie Kids

Yay, my sister finally emailed me the pictures from my 22nd birthday. My family and I went to San Francisco for lovefest. We got a hotel. Partied.  The usual. Sean Kinsey, Max Miller, Paul Telford, Terri Brindisi, and Chris Carlson all partied with us. It was ten shades of amazing. We went to lovefest during the day, got some good seafood in the wharf, partied in our hotel, and then walked around the city being drunken fools and ending up at nok nok in the Haight. Dancing my face off. Then the next day we all went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate park.

Enjoy ^_^

peace