Merry Christmas!!!!

Well, the day is just about over and it was super fun! Alex got a PS3 (it's at his dad's - he got it from Grammy and Grampy) and some games for his DS and for the PS2 here, plus Heely's (he thought that they would be super easy to do, but not so much - as he's finding out)

and some Tony Hawk shoes and shirts, a cool book that I made on Snapfish (thanks Oprah for the freebie) that is all about him and has his skating pics in it,

an iDog soft speaker for his iPod,

a new PlanB belt and a few miscellaneous toys. I got a Nintendo DS lite with a gift card that I got from my kids at school and a case and a game (my DS is pink and it's soooo cool!), plus Alex gave me a framed piece of his artwork, 2 books and Gavin Rossdale's new CD. We had quite a good time.

We got Angel a Kong and some treats for it - that was quite funny watching her try to get it out.

In the afternoon we got an invite to go to our assistant pastor's (Shannon) house for dinner and a fun time! It was fun and of course Alex loves to hang out with John and Shane, so all is well! Hope you all had a great holiday! Merry Christmas with love from both of us :)

The Christmas Decor Is Up!

The king of the goofballs! Happy to be done putting the ornaments on the tree....but he's the one who wanted me to wait to decorate the tree until he got home from his dad's....

We didn't put up as much stuff as we could have, but we have our stuff up! I realized more this year just how much Christmas decor I have and how I could never arrange it artfully enough to fit it all into this apartment! Here are some pics...

The tree - with and without the flash so that you can appreciate the 1000 lights!

Our countdown to Christmas calendar...

The beautiful poinsettia that my class got me! Sweet parents and kids!!

Cute living tree - gotta find a place to plant it in the spring!

My teddy bear creche and Alex's bendy people creche from VBS - Cute, huh?

Memories of Christmases long ago - this was our gift from Alex in 2003...it's sooo stinkin' cute that I have saved it and get it out every year!

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!

Thanksgiving in Michigan

I decided that it would be a great idea to drive to Michigan for Thanksgiving weekend....man, that is a long drive to do all at once! We left Peachtree City about 8:30 pm the day before Thanksgiving and finally arrived in Battle Creek at about 9:45 am on Thanksgiving Day. I was soooo tired, but so glad to be there! The kids were all thrilled to see each other, I got to go on the crazy Black Friday shopping trip with Robyn and Margie, and I got to hang out with the family.....it was just what Thanksgiving was supposed to be! Black Friday was crazy! I went to bed about 10:30 on Thanksgiving night, then got up at 2:30 am to be to Robyn's by 3:00 am and Margie picked us up at 3:15! We got to Kohl's at 3:40 am so that we could stand in line to get in when they opened at 4:00! What a crazy thing to do....I did get some good deals though, so it wasn't too nuts!! The funniest part was that we got in line to pay at 4:45 and didn't get out of the store until 6:20!! Yeah, that's right - and hour and half to spend my $75!! We also wanted to get a great deal at Target for Caleb (Target opened at 6:00 am), but they were already sold out by the time we got there at 6:30!! Anyway, it was a fun time - we had lunch about 11:00 at Applebee's and then headed home - we actually had to take stuff over to Robyn's parents house and drop it off so that we had room in Margie's PT Cruiser for the rest of the shopping trip!! It was a really great day and lots of napping took place that afternoon!!! :)

We took some pics of the kids playing in the basement at Scott and Robyn's - here they are, but don't expect too much, they didn't exactly cooperate!!

Here are some more pics of the fam...