HO, HO, HO, Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful day like we did! On Thursday I only had to work about a ½ a day. My boss was nice and let me go home, due to it being Christmas Eve Eve. Brian also left work early, so he picked me up about noon. We went to lunch with my boss at Chili’s before heading for home.

I spent the afternoon doing not too much of anything. I sorted laundry and took a nice long nap. I had to be to WnW at 4:30pm, so about 4pm, I headed out in my Kia. It was still pretty slick, but I made it to work, going at a SLOW rate of speed. While I was at work that night it started to snow again. We just got another dusting on top of all the other snow we had, but it was COLD! It was about -3 when I left work to head for home at 9pm.

Rick and Brian were playing scrabble when I got home. I joined them in the next game; however I didn’t do a very good job, and came in third. Oh well, I was playing the 2 Scrabble kings, so what could I expect. I would like to play Taboo with them though, I am much better at that game!

Friday morning I woke up about 7:30am. I started doing lots of laundry. I must have done 5 or 6 loads! It’s hard to find time to do the laundry working 2 jobs, and I still won’t let Brian touch it. So, I get it done in mass quantities when I can. While the loads were going I wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. I had not yet wrapped any gifts for my family yet. Brian and I headed out to get some breakfast about 10am, and when we got back, we backed the Jeep into the garage so we could fill it with gifts. We had so many large gifts we had to take 2 cars to get down to my parents house!

We filled the Jeep with all the gifts, then put away the mountain of laundry and then packed up everything else we would need for the night. We loaded the dogs in my car and we headed off down to my parents house. We arrived about 6:30pm. Originally Suzi and Zak were expected to arrive at 8pm. However, they got on the road late and they got there about 9pm instead. We played Uno until they arrived. Once they got there, we had our large Christmas Eve dinner. We had prime rib, and potatoes as well as asparagus and a few other things. It was delicious. After that, we headed to bed.

I woke up about 7:30am Christmas morning and was not able to get back to sleep. I got up to get dressed. Seems Zak had been up since 5:30am. Finally Suzi started to stir as well as Brian and the rest of the house. I think we finally got to opening gifts around 9am.

There were gifts galore! Big ones, small ones, yellow ones, blue ones… It was just like a page from Dr. Seuss. Brian had the most gifts out of everyone. How does he finagle that?

We distracted the dogs from getting into everything by giving them the bones from the prime rib the night before. It worked like a charm. We were able to open gifts in peace.

Best gifts of the day? For Brian, he said his Hokie Bird Feeder from his sister. For me, my Jeff Gordon car I really wanted and thought didn’t exist from my mom! (Plus the Daytona tickets, however I all ready knew about those). For Suzi, it was the sewing machine Brian and I gave her and for Zak it was his Nintendo DS that my mom gave him. Hard to say what my parents liked best. The dogs love everything they got!

Mid morning we broke for breakfast, which was yummy! After the presents were all opened, we opened stockings. After every piece of wrapping paper was ripped of every gift imaginable, we took a break and waited for dinner. Zak played with his Nintendo, Suzi got all their gifts organized, Brian and I took a short nap and then Suzi and I played some Uno.

Then we had a delicious dinner with Ham, cheesy spinach potatoes, broccoli, squash, and yams. After that a family game of Pictionary, that Brain and I were the champions of!

After that we packed up the Jeep and my car and headed for home. The dogs are now sound asleep at our feet in the office. They had a LONG day, ya know! We have got most of our gifts put away, and the pictures on line. You can view them at: www.dooh.com/pics

You will notice a few with jelly beans and my mom making some odd faces. We put some of the Harry Potter Beanie Botts (or something like that) in her and Suzi’s stocking. They make ear wax flavor, and soap flavor, along with dirt and earthworm, spaghetti, grass, sardine, and a few other ODD flavors of Jelly Beans. Oh yeah, and vomit and booger flavor (really, not kidding!). My mom had just tried the soap one. It tastes like soap! I tried one also. We tried most every gross flavor there was. The vomit we spit out, as well as the booger one. They tasted pretty bad. But we had fun trying them. Grass didn’t actually taste too bad! Dirt tasted like dirt!

We all got many many wonderful gifts from many wonderful people! Thank you all for thinking of us! And thank you all for the wonderful gifts! Brian and I feel very lucky and blessed to have so many wonderful friends and family members!

And now, it’s getting late. Time to go to bed so I can wake up early tomorrow to go to WnW.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.