Christmas Catch Up...

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted anything! I had a crazy busy month, that ended by getting one of the worst cases of stomach flu that I have ever experienced! I really hope that I will do a much better job with blogging in the future!

We had a wonderful Christmas. We started with celebrating with my dad and his wife Linda on the Sunday before Christmas. We have a tradition of having breakfast together on the Sunday before Christmas. That was perfect this year because Ashley had to work at 11am. We had a great time having breakfast and opening gifts.

I had the on-call duties for Discovery Living this year through Christmas. I was worried about it - but it ended up being okay, only minor issues to deal with.

We spent Christmas eve with my mom, my sister and her husband, at my sister's house. It was a great time. Susie made a great meal, and we had a lot of fun hanging out and opening presents. We started a new tradition this year, amongst us gals - Mom, Susie, Ashley, and myself. We each bought each other our 3 favorite things and then exchanged them. It was a lot of fun! My mom's favorite things were: a journal, because she loves to journal every day and hopes that we will all do that too, with the journals was also a magnet with her favorite bible verse. Her second favorite thing was Oil of Olay soap, and her last favorite thing was a bouquet of very pretty Christmas flowers, because she loves flowers! Ashley won for the prettiest presentation of her favorite things, she put her three favorite things in gorgeous baskets and tied a gorgeous ribbon bow to it. Her three favorite things were Pasta Roni, Starbucks Frappucino, and a Yankee Candle - Honeydew Melon scent. Susie's favorite things were purse size things - Johnson's Lotion, a little can of lysol, a little package of lysol antibacterial wipes, and a bag of Weight Watcher Chocolate Candies. My favorite things were: Premium Little Crackers (for some reason they are sooooo much better than the regular soup crackers), Burts Bee's Cuticle Cream, a Rubbermaid Container - the clear hard plastic kind with the black rubber lid that snap and stack together and a cute little Flurryville Snowman Ornament! We all loved doing this! Even Steve and Aaron wish they could have done that for each other - they jokingly said - they could've exchanged their favorite beers and sausages! It was something fun and different to do! I hope that we can do it again next year!

After celebrating with Susie and Aaron, we drove the long way through town to look at Christmas lights, dropped mom off, and came home to exchange gifts amongst ourselves. Reggie was sooooo excited! You seriously would not believe how smart this little guy is about things like Christmas, birthdays and presents! It was like he knew which presents were his under the tree -crazy! He loves it - but we like to take turns - and he likes to just open them all! Ashley got her laptop, and seemed excited about it!

Then, Santa came while we were all sleeping. We all had fun checking out our stockings when we got up. Then we had a very yummy breakfast pizza. Pasqueli's makes a wonderful breakfast pizza - they are made in Humbolt, Ia. Walmart and Hy-Vee both sell them - they are way better than the Casey's breakfast pizza's, not nearly as greasy, and a much better crust - plus they are a lot cheaper.

After that, we relaxed most of the rest of the day together. We all had to work on the day after Christmas.

Then, before we knew it, it was time to celebrate the ringing in of 2009!

Here we are already at January 4, 2009, and time to head back for a 5 day work week! I will try to learn how to add photos later this week.