Whew! I made it through!

Just as quickly as it crept up on me, it is gone. I am always shocked at how fast the holidays come and go and it seems I don't even have time to enjoy it before it's over. We had an amazing Christmas as usual. I received bounteous gifts and loved the excitement in my children's faces. My amazing husband spoils me terribly, no matter how persistently I beg him not to. He has great taste and has always been very perceptive and thoughtful with my presents. We spent a lot of great quality time with our awesome families, ate WAY too much chubby food, and OH how I have loved sleeping in. I'm not getting any extra sleep though, thanks RockBand 2! I am so very blessed and once again find myself thinking, why me? So many amazing people in the world deserve what I have and a lot of times, I don't. I am so eternally grateful for EVERYTHING in my life-good and bad. Without the rain, there are no rainbows!

my cute elf kids

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I Think I Can Breathe Now.....Maybe?

Whoa! What a whirl wind my life has been the past few weeks! I have been going a hundred miles an hour since before Thanksgiving and am just now thinking it may slow down. I love Christmas so much, but it seems a lot of times I am almost too busy to enjoy it. I would love to sit by my fire and listen to beautiful holiday tunes and relax. Maybe the next 10 days (crazy!) will allow me some down time. We went to Geoff's family Christmas party this weekend and had a great time as usual. It is so much work and so much "crap" to pack that sometimes I think we are insane! We stay for 2 nights at a cabin just 40 minutes away, but we pack more than if we were going to Europe for 3 weeks! My Armada was so full of stuff I had to hold a box on my lap and had stuff piled at my feet, so I couldn't even move. We enjoyed delicious food and ate more "chubby stuff" than we ever should have. We played games and argued over ridiculous answers at Scattegories. We bundled and unbundled the children too many times to count. We made adorable crafts and listen to Christmas carols. Geoff's Mom goes all out and does a too cute nativity with all the kids. She puts so much time, effort and money into this little re-enactment that she deserves way more credit than we give her. Jourdan was an angel and was the cutest thing you have ever seen! Shae made an excellent Wise man, and Ashton was pretty pumped about being Joseph. It was so cute! We all fought over the Trivial Pursuit 80's game I brought as my gift for the exchange, but after we tried to play it we were glad we didn't get it because we all felt like huge idiots and couldn't answer any of the questions. I'll stick with the Battleship game I won and feel smart playing it! We stayed up way to late and didn't sleep that well, so now I will need a few days to catch up on my Z's. It started to snow pretty good on Sat. evening, so we were all so excited, it looked so beautiful up there. Our late night conversations turned a little "racy" but we were all laughing so hard that it was too hilarious to stop! Somehow we came home with way more junk than we went with so my car was packed to much to even take our stuff home, we had to send some of it with Geoff's parents and will get it later. All in all we had a blast and we look forward to next year and the craziness of it all. Geoff's family is awesome and I love them all. Thanks for the great weekend! Good Times, Good Times. The cousins in Bethlehem
Ashton as Joseph


Wise "man" Shae- she graciously gave her role as Mary to a disgruntled cousin who later that day punched her in her face, nice payback huh?

Doesn't he look sweet? Well, he wasn't! He was torturing "Mary" through the whole show, and then beat up another angel and made him cry. Looks are decieving!