...Christmas (and New Years) has ended!...

...and I'm JUST now writing about it. Yes, I know. I have made promises and resolutions about keeping up better, and blogging more, and here I am, a month later, finally updating. Let me throw out my excuses and see if anyone has any pity. In the midst of the past month, we have been packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, decorating, packing, wrapping, traveling, unpacking, baking, entertaining, traveling, .... so on and so forth. No pity? You've been doing the same thing and still kept up with your regular routines you say? Well...props to you.


OK. One month has gone by, and SO much has gone on. I had to go re-read my other blog just to see how much everyone has missed out on. My last statement was "I never want to move at Christmas again"...and I still firmly believe in that. So much so that we worked out our lease to be until Jan 2011 (wow that was weird to write that date, i'm still getting used to 2010) just so we wouldn't have to mess with it. We made it through, however. Whew.
Chad and I packed up everything on Dec. 18th. It took a while. Its never fun packing everything up. Even being optimistic doesn't help because what you "have to look forward to" is just going back through all the stuff you spent hours packing and unpacking it all. I must say if I had to choose between the two, I would pick unpacking...but only to a certain extent. At first its exciting because its a new place for everything...then after hours of that you are just ready to be moved in and done. (Do I sound like I just moved or what?)
That saturday my family and a good friend of mine showed up and we loaded everything into a truck we had rented for the day. We spent all day loading and unloading, and going back and loading and then unloading again. We finally got about finished when my parents surprised us with their Christmas present - a new couch! We had been searching high and low for couches - used and new, stores and Craigslist - and my dealhunting Dad found some awesome ones at a store that was liquidating. We all went and we got to pick one out! It is a light tan microsuede couch and we love it :) Thanks guys!!


Moved in, started unpacking, and then 4 days later had to pack and leave for our Christmas road trip! We figured out this trip was going to be the longest trip we've been on while married. Our honeymoon was 6 days and this was going to be 7. Look at us growing up so fast.
Wednesday the 23rd I worked a 1/2 day and then headed back home to finish packing and wrapping our gifts. We hit the road and headed off to Memphis! We arrived there that night and like always, was greeted with warm hugs and smiles :) We decided to go ahead and do family christmas since the extended family would be there the next day.  We got some wonderful wonderful things (Yall are just too sweet!) including: a beautiful scarf from Chelsie which i've already worn several times, some spectacular earrings (which i've worn about every day...no exaggeration), a starbucks sampler (who wouldn't love that - mmm!), some gift cards and money (always winners), sweatshirts which we have much needed in this random 10 degree weather here in bama, a very cool travel bag set (it has a tote and all these other matching bags that you can organize your jewlery, bathroom items, shoes, dirty clothes, etc. I LOVE it. So organized!!), [and let me insert this right now - i have been working on this single blog until this point for almost a month now, and it is taking waaaay too long...so I have now decided to do more of a 'sum up' so that I can get back to normal blogging...yes, i know i've done/said this before. I'm so sorry i keep everyone hanging like this haha hopefully 2010 will be a new page for blogging!] 

The next day the extended family came - Chad's maternal grandparents (Mema and Papa), Aunt and Uncle (Todd and Sarah) and their son Alex, and Papa's sister Deanna ('Dee'). In the morning before they got there it was time to decorate the Christmas cookies! We spent quite a while on them and I must say I was pretty proud of a few of mine (ha). That afternoon was games, catching up, and chilling out. Great family time! That night We watched It's A Wonderful Life (who doesn't love that movie) and did more games and family time :) This was also the day I tried out, for the first time every, puppy chow - and it worked! That stuff was a-mazing and we are holding on to that recipe forever. We also played some games - we did a 'theme-song' trivia quiz. Doug sat at his computer and played old tv theme songs and we had to guess what it was. I was horrible and my team lost. No Hershey's bar :( However later in the week we played a Christmas trivia quiz and it was guys against girls...girls dominated. Thats right.
The next day was Christmas!! Most of the morning was spent cooking and preparing for the LOVELY Christmas dinner to come. The dinner was absolutely spectacular and I believe I gained about 10 pounds just by looking at it. Another 10 came after I ate it all :)
Presents that night consisted of the 'kids' opening our gifts and then later a gift swap between all of the adults. We got to participate in both, no argument there haha. Every gift was so thoughtful and there is not one thing I haven't used!  Seriously, that is no joke.  A Christmas Story was also watched on this day - and I just have to say I will never get tired of that movie. Priceless.

Saturday we headed out to the new church building to take a look around. I cannot believe how much it has changed just within the month we had been gone! Things are coming together perfectly and I cannot wait to see the final project. I feel so privileged to have seen the steps its taken - what talented people have all brought together to form this incredible building. That architect sure is a good one! ;)
After the building we headed home for a VERY quick bite and then off to the movies. Chad, Brett, and Doug all went and saw Avatar and everyone else headed out to see Sherlock Holmes. I must say it was better than expected and very well done. (Avatar I had made a vow not to see...and I broke that vow last week. It was actually a good movie, and I am sorry for all the bad comments I had given it prior to my viewing haha). That night was leftovers and catch phrase! Always a good game - even though I personally was off my game that night, we still had a blast. 



Sunday we had to leave :( I don't think it will ever be easy leaving. Its always such a sad time, even when we are hours down the road. Still miss everyone! Sundays trip (which I originally thought was 6 hours) was 9 HOURS to Indiana. Yes, 9 hours. Thank goodness Chad was with me because if I had to drive that alone I would have fallen asleep for sure. We actually had a lot of fun as usual. When we got into Indianapolis though, the snow storm started up. We couldn't barely see in front of us and everyone was going about 3 miles an hour. Then we started seeing cars that had run off the road, collisions in the middle of the interstate, etc etc. Now this is normally bad enough, but then I noticed the license plates of all these cars. Indiana.  Not out of towners who didn't know any better, but people who had lived there their whole lives were the ones making all the mistakes. After this realization we were freaked out since our tag was definitely a southern Alabama tag. Whew! We made it through and finally arrived at my grandparents house :)
We ate a late dinner and hung out / talked and then Chad and I headed out to our hotel. The next day was our Christmas. We did gifts with my mom's parents, my family, and my mom's sister and her family. Lunch was afterwards and then the boys (Kevin, Kyle, Chad and Ryan) suited up and went outside to play in the snow! They did sleds and snowball fights, it was hilarious. Wish we had snow like that here...sometimes. Other times I'm very glad we don't haha. 
That night we played one of the games we received - Would You Rather. It is hilarious situation you have to choose between and then some 'challenges' you have to pass. Well, one of the challenges I did was balancing a pickle (yes, you read that right) between my upper lip and nose for an entire round. I did it and passed with flying colors, although the picture taken of me is now on facebook and embarrassing to say the least haha 

That night we ate cannoli's from a bakery in Boston. Let me explain. My mom and her sister's had taken my Grandmother to Boston for her 80th birthday this year. She LOVES it and so it was an awesome vacation for them. One place they had wanted to go was called Mike's Bakery and they were famous for their cannoli's. When they went, however, the line was so long they couldn't even see into the bakery. So they skipped it. My grandmother had said her only regret of that trip had been that they hadn't tried one of the famous cannoli's...hence the amazing Christmas present from the sisters = a box from Mike's Bakery with cannoli making ingredients. It was so much fun :) 




















Tuesday was our trip home - another 9 hour trip. We decided to stop at a Barnes and Noble because 1) we had a gift certificate there and 2) 9 hour road trip would be great with a book on CD! We have been wanting to read the new Dan Brown book so we decided to go ahead and get the CD to give us something to do in the car. SO 3 stops later, after finding out that an app on our iPhone thought 2 other bookstores were Barnes and Noble when they WEREN'T, we ended up in Elizabethtown, KY (like the movie!) to find our BOCD (book on cd...haha). Finally found the place and headed back on our way despite spending 1/2 the trip looking for the B&N ha. So the rest of the way home was spent listening to that and to this day we are still finishing it. We have a few chapters left to go and listen to it about every time we go anywhere in the truck.

The next weekend was New Years weekend and we had some friends over to our new place and played the Wii, watched the Red Bull Challenge, watched the ball drop, and played the Wii some more. 
We did Christmas with my family that weekend and it was funny because they had all already done their 'family christmas' so it was basically me and Chad opening gifts while everyone else watched. It was great thought :) The stockings (no fruit! ha) are always first so we dug into those. Then we got the gifts: the big ones being a camera (yay!!), couch, and gift cards. My mom also got me a necklace that says 'Mother, Daughter, Friend' across a circle (cue the awww's) and a sweater :) Overall a wonderful Christmas and again it is always fun having family time!


OK so there is your condensed version of our Christmas. 2010...hopefully you will make me more capable of finding time to actually  make good, detailed blogs that everyone will enjoy haha. More to come very soon!!

oh yeah thats us in our backyard - yay!!