Our Christmas Holiday 2010

Christmas came and went already this year - I can't believe there's only 1 more week left in this year! How crazy is that!?

It almost scares me as that means Jay will be here in the flesh in less than 2 months and iono... as excited as we are to meet him, I am a bit nervous/scared and just not quite ready for him to come out yet!

Anyways, I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday - I know we did!

I spent Thursday evening (Christmas Eve Eve) watching some of the classic Christmas specials - I made it through the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and most of Frosty the Snowman before passing out on the couch! I had planned on also watching The Little Drummer Boy and Santa Claus is Coming to Town but just couldn't stay awake!

Tiger and her belated birthday/Christmas present

We also gave Tiger her belated birthday/Christmas present too which is this combination carpet scratching post with a feather "birdie" that snaps onto it. OMG she LOVED it! Once she realized it was hers, she went nuts playing with it for a good 10-15 minutes before wearing herself out and taking a break! It was amusing and entertaining watching her! I need to go out and buy some of the snap-on feather "birdies" as she already lost the one that came with it, lol...

Hubby got off work from UPS at 430am Friday, so he got a few more hours of sleep than he had been - Thursday morning, at 730am while filling out his timecards, he completely passed out at the computer and all his full-time supervisors caught him in the act and woke him up with their laughing. Photos were taken too - it was pretty amusing! Poor guy though, he's fighting off a cold as last week he only got about 4 hours of sleep a day and then this week he was getting 2 hours of sleep or less a day! I knew he was going to get sick and he did... fortunately I've been lucky enough not to catch it... yet!

Christmas Eve they didn't need me to come into work so I relaxed in the afternoon and then hubby and I met up with my family at church for the annual Candles and Carols Christmas Eve service at our church. It only lasts about 45 minutes and goes by pretty quick, although poor hubby - he kept dozing off every few minutes! I kept having to poke him when it came time to light our candles at the end of the service, telling him he didn't want to be the one to set fire to anything or burn down the church because he couldn't stay awake for Silent Night! lol...

After that we went back to my parents house and snacked on Swedish meatballs and veggies while mom finished dinner - we always have Shepherd's Pie which is basically a meat, potato, cheese and veggie casserole and she also made her chicken tetrazine and some other stuff. After dinner we had time to kill before dessert (which was assorted cheesecake - yum!) so we opened presents.

I got the Shark Vac-then-Steam that I wanted - it was a combined gift between my parents and my mom's dad. We also got some DVDs (Beauty and the Beast, Inception, Fantasia/Fantasia2000, the Star Wars original trilogy set), and hubby got his A-Gloves and a leather folio/easel case for his Samsung Galaxy tablet (which my aunt kept calling an iPad and we kept having to set her straight that no, it's an Android tablet, not an Apple one, lol... hubby's not big on Apple tablets or phones since he works with Droids).

I can finally tell what we got everyone, as I've been dying to share! We got my dad the brand new Tom Clancy book which is the next one in the Jack Ryan series as well as a bookmark; we got my sis a Wicked the Musical 2011 planner/organizer/datebook as well as a matching bookmark; we got my mom the 70th anniversary 2-disc Gone With the Wind DVD as I remember he mentioning how she needed to get that one eventually as it's one of her favorites yet she didn't own a copy of it; we got my 11 year old cousin the Avatar game for Nintendo DS as well as a long-sleeved graphic tee from The Children's Place; we gave my uncle the Airplane! DVD; and my aunt we gave her this glass angel tealight holder I bought from Partylite with some candles to go with it. I didn't know my sister's quasi-boyfriend was joining us and taking part in gifts so we didn't know to get him anything - oops! (and I say "quasi-boyfriend" as they're not officially dating until she's 18 this spring, but he's pretty much been accepted into the family and they're ALWAYS together it seems).

After that we had dessert and some of us sat around and chatted while the others went in the family room and watched the 2nd showing of 24 Hours of A Christmas Story. Hubby fell asleep during the movie and it was around midnight when I got him awake enough for us to head home.

Christmas morning we woke up by 10am and watched the last half of A Christmas Story together in bed. My mom called and said they found a few more presents for us that my sis had forgot to wrap so once we got dressed we swung by their house again - we also got Iron Man 2 on DVD and I got the book "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and a Punky Brewster 8-episode DVD that mom said dad had to get for me! hehe

We drove the hour and 15 minutes out to my inlaw's house, arriving there just after 1pm and promptly got stuck in their driveway. Here's the thing - my inlaw's driveway is about a 1/4 mile long and a pain to shovel when it snows a lot and if it's not done well, it's easy to get stuck in! Also, hubby's car is front-wheel drive and one of the tires needs replaced as the tread sucks on it right now. 2 of my brother-in-laws were home, but instead of shoveling the majority of the driveway, they just shoveled a path, which of course hubby's car went off, lol... one of them had to come out and help us push it the rest of the way to the parking area! lol...

We sat around and hung out with everyone while my mother-in-law finished making dinner, although my father-in-law has walking pneumonia so I had to keep my distance as I really can't afford to catch that, even if he is on antibiotics! Hubby's other younger brother and his girlfriend showed up just before dinner and we ate it all up - it was yummy!

Present from my mother-in-law

After dinner we exchanged what gifts we had, as my mother-in-law was a bit preoccupied the last 2 weeks with my father-in-law being sick and didn't have a chance to go into town and get gifts for everyone yet. One of hubby's brothers got him a fleece jacket that he can wear at work and gave me a pair of A-Gloves. My mother-in-law did have a gift for me - she got me this really neat porcelain mother and child figurine from Partylite which you drop in scent oil and it makes the room smell nice! She asked if I got my Sketcher Shape-Up shoes from anyone yet - I told her I got a check from my grandparents which I was going to put towards them and she said she'd give me the rest of the money to get them, so I'll be getting those soon too, as I can't wait to wear them this spring once the weather is nice when I take Jay for walks in his stroller!

Hubby's 12 year old sister is really into Nancy Drew right now so we got her the next book in the series (#15) with a bookmark hubby picked out for her as well as a Nancy Drew PC game that she didn't have yet. We got his mom a glass cross tealight holder from Partylite with some candles for it and we got his dad the The Blue and the Gray miniseries DVD set. We combined his brother's gift as we got them Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PS3. For hubby's older brother's family we gave our 3 year old nephew a Thomas the Train memory matching game, our newborn infant nephew some cute onesies with monkey's on them, and for the family we got them the Toy Story 3 DVD and some popcorn packets. They sent us cute onesies for Jay as well as a pack of Dallas Cowboys booties that'll match the onesies we got him in Dallas perfectly! My aunt also got us this rubber bath duckie for Jay that tells you if the temperature is too hot.

After that, hubby wanted to play some CoD: Black Ops with his brothers, but they had to pack some stuff up to take to a friends so him, me and his sister played it for a bit. I'm pretty horrible at shooters (in most I tend to pick a spot and camp it and shoot as people run past, or in Halo I get a vehicle and mow people over with it!), but hubby and I did decent at the Nazi Zombie level, as we formed a strategy where I would stay back and shoot from a distance while he would stay up front and do all the tasks you do in the level. I got bored and joined the girls for some pumpkin pie while hubby started playing the story-mode.

We left around 830, as my brother-in-laws were heading out to their friend's house and we had to leave at the same time otherwise we'd never be able to get the car out of the driveway! It took all 3 of them to push us up and out to the road and took nearly 10 minutes!

I also found out that my bestest college buddy (my longterm college roomie) got engaged!!! They're not having the wedding til 2012, but she already asked me to be a bridesmaid and I'm sooo excited! While I was a Jr. Bridesmaid in my aunt's wedding 13-14 years ago when I was in Jr. High, I've been dying to get asked to be a bridesmaid in one of my friend's weddings for years, so I'm thrilled I finally get to be an actual bridesmaid for someone!

For Christmas, hubby had mainly asked for Best Buy giftcards as he was originally wanting to put them towards a new computer monitor since both his flatscreen LCD ones crapped out within a few months of each other and we've been using my old boxy 8-year old Dell one. However, he had recently been debating about putting the giftcards/money he got for Christmas towards a PS3 or XBox (eventually deciding on a PS3 as it has a Blue-Ray player). After playing CoD: Black Ops last night, he decided he wanted the PS3 more. He got several giftcards for Christmas, and we split the check my grandparents send us every year, plus he had some money saved up and his mom said she'd give him some for the "fund" as his Christmas present, so last night we went online to Best Buy's website to see what kind of deals they had on them. We're getting the 160gb PS3 bundle with LittleBigPlanet and an extra controller and it comes with a $50 giftcard too. Since hubby can't wait, we're putting it on the Best Buy card that I have and will just pay it off when we make January's payment on it. He also added CoD: Black Ops to it as well.

So today I'm picking up our PS3, stopping by Target to see about getting another DVD rack (as we realized last night while putting our new DVDs away that we have no more space!), stopping by Borders and picking up the 2011 WoW trivia desktop calendar since it's 50% off now and I have $5 in Borders Bucks that expire this week, and then stopping by Gamestop to trade-in a few games and maybe get a few newer ones (I'm thinking Batman: Arkham Asylum for PS3 and Mario Party 8 for Wii). Hubby invited a co-worker to come over and play video games tonight too so I need to clean up around here a little (he originally was going over to his place after work, but I pointed out that his co-worker has seen him more in the last 2 weeks than I have and I'd like to spend some time with him now that he's not working almost 100hrs a week, lol...)

How have your holidays been?