A Late Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Well, we both hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We thoroughly enjoyed our time up in Kansas City with family. We spend all of Christmas Eve with Nick's family and Christmas day with mine. It turned out to be a great weekend.

Saturday morning we opened presents with Bill & Julie and Bill's kids, Nick & Mallory. Nick got a flash drive, a Linksys router, a wireless mouse, the Star Wars DVD collection, Polo cologne, money to buy the Lord of the Rings Risk boardgame, and stocking stuffer "stuff". I got two Willow Tree figurines (both of which were too cute!), some lavendar lounge socks, Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events and Finding Neverland on DVD, Victoria's Secret body gel and lotion, two of Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals cookbooks, some really cute throw pillows for our bed that Julie made to match our curtains, and stocking stuffer "stuff". We both were blown away by their generousity and at the great gifts we got. It was a fun morning. Later that day, Julie and I drove to pick up Nick and my wedding pictures in North Kansas City. I was hoping to get them before Christmas to give out to family. Luckily, we were able to get them that afternoon and go to Wal-Mart to do some last minute purchases (namely, frames for the pictures!). That evening we went to a candlelit service at Nick's grandparents' church and had Christmas with his extended family. They have a tradition of drawing names and purchasing for one person in the family. I drew Nick's grandma's name and I got her PJ's. Nick got War of the Worlds as his present; I got a beautiful full-size Willow Tree figurine called "Together". Nick's Aunt Cherri surprised us with a beautiful quilt/bedspread as well.

On Sunday, we went to my grandparents house. They had a humungous amount of food (two snack bars for the day, accompanied by a huge late lunch). Since our extended family is so spread out, we usually only see each other at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it makes it all the more special. It was definitely nice to see everyone. At our Christmas there, we got a lockbox, a Dustbuster, Christmas ornaments, refills for my Franklin Covey planner, two more cookbooks, money, a magnetic dartboard, and two CD's. My parents surprised us with paying to having our piano tuned, something that I've been meaning to do for the past six months. It was a fun time.

Christmas seemed to continue as Michael and McKenzie ended up coming back down with us to Joplin for a couple days. They just left this morning and we will be looking forward to having Nick's mom down for New Years tomorrow evening.

Take care and happy holidays!