Holiday Excitement!

 
So these last couple of weeks have been extremely busy and packed with work, family, friends, and the holidays!  We started the holiday season off with a really nice weekend with Chris's side of the family.  I really have grown to love his mom, dad, brother, and grandparents.  They are like my own family.  We had a wonderful weekend catching up with all of them at the lake.  Even the girls had a blast!  I can not believe how blessed we were when it came to gifts this year.  We are truly loved!  I got more than I ever could have asked for.  I think two of my fav gifts from that side include a special pot that can go in the oven and on the stove top and a casserole carrier that has my initials on it.  Believe it or not both of these gifts came from my Mom and Dad H!  They sure know and love me!

 The girls were also spoiled rotten as usual at this family Christmas.  They had so much fun opening their gifts from their grandparents.  The entire family seemed to have fun and relax.  The only down side was my bother's girlfriend... she and I don't always see eye to eye.  Chris says she is just teasing.  But where I come from teasing is not hurtful.  I think she just enjoys slamming me down.  She knows I wont slam her back... that's just not me.  I would feel bad and it just isn't who I want to be.  I guess I will just have to pray for patients and thick skin.

While with the family... we also had the chance to go and meet the Swamp people.  They were signing autographs in Chris's hometown.  I have never watched the show but PawPaw enjoys it so we loaded everyone up in the car and headed to meet the Swamp People.  Gotta love what the South is famous for...

Overall it was a great weekend at the lake with that side of the family!  Then I did something different and random... I changed my hair color.  I went a little darker.  So far I am liking it... It is different but fun and new.  We will see if it stays this way.

Then this week Chris and I had the best visitors !  One of my very best friends (almost more like my sister) and her son, D came into town.  She brought her wonderful parents and her little dog Frank with her!  Suddenly our house was full of fun and laughter and the holiday spirit.  Monday night the entire group of us went and rode the Polar Express and got to see the Big Man himself.  It was so much fun!  All the kids were in their pajamas and elves brought us cookies and milk!  We all sang Christmas carols and it really began to feel like the festive holiday I remember from my childhood... not the work, business, exhaustion I have been feeling lately.  I can't decide if D was more excited about riding the train or getting to meet Santa.  I don't know... the train was pretty cool.  If you have never taken the time to ride the train in Calera, AL then you should definately give it a try... and Christmas is the perfect time.  They have an entire train musium.  Really neat stuff! Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum  Chris and I are already talking about making it one of our family traditions once we have kids. 

The next day the family and I went to the Winter Wonderland at Birmingham's very own McWane Science Center.  It was a blast!  They had a snow room, giant Lego blocks, and a giant light bright that took up an entire wall.  They also had 20 different miniature/model train sets set up all over the place.  It was so cool!  D had a blast playing and running everywhere.  I only wish Chris could have gone with us but somebody has to work full time!  LOL!  The Winter Wonderland also had a zip line set up just for the kids and a slide that went all the way from one floor of the explorium to the other. The zip line was too much fun to watch!  I can't wait to go back to the McWane Center and explore the rest of it!  Hopefully A and D will comeback soon so we can play!


I am officially finishing up work before the holidays.  Sometimes it feels like work and school will never be done.  But I guess that is all just part of it.  I will get there.  I have to... Anyway, next Chris and I are off to spend Christmas with my side of the family.  That will be a blog post or series of them all on its own! I guess I can only hope to keep the holiday magic and excitement D seems to have buckets of through the Christmas season.  Merry Christmas Blogger world!  May you all have that childlike happiness and contentment.

Weekend Adventures

So this last weekend my little sister, L, came to stay with us.  It was so nice to have her come play for the weekend.  She lives up North and sometimes we will go months without seeing each other.  This semester has been rare because she has been traveling for work and has stopped in to visit a couple of times. 

Anyone who knows L and I know that we are complete opposites.  She is outspoken, beautiful (long blond hair, thin, and legs that go on for miles!), brilliant, tall, wild, loud in everything she does, and is never afraid of an adventure.  L is also extremely artistic and talented but she is also overly analytical and a perfectionist. I, on the other hand, am not overly outspoken.  In fact I hate conflict.  I am also only of average height.  I try hard and wear heels to help.  I used to wear tall heels to try and be taller than my 5th grade students.  Now I just wear them because I love them and I love the extra inch or two they give me.  I am also a planner... to the extreme.  I like to have things on the calendar and I like figuring out the logistics of things.  I like organization.  I also hate to not finish what I start.  It might not always be done perfectly but it is done.  Sometimes our differences drive us crazy.  We can fight like cats and dogs.  But sometimes our differences compliment us and we have a blast and do some amazing things. 

This last weekend was one of those times.  We spent Saturday doing Christmas arts and crafts and watching chick shows until the SEC championship game came on TV.  We had dinner in and spent most of the day in our yoga pants and sweatshirts.  It was so much fun!  I love watching her do art.  The only problem is she can't see how beautiful her work is... she gets frustrated with the imperfections and messes with it until it really is messed up or she simply takes it apart to redo it or worse yet she throws her art down and doesn't finish it.  I wish she could understand how much talent she possesses in artistic ability and that part of the perfection is the imperfections.

Sunday we got up and went to the Broken Egg for breakfast.  It was a lot of fun!  I had never been there before and really enjoyed the food.  It was a little rich but tasty at the same time.  After breakfast we went shopping.  It was nice to have a girl to go shopping with.  Most of my girlfriends still live far away so I miss the girlie time of wondering around a store chatting.  A and T used to be my go to for that sort of thing but now I usually drag Chris along or go alone.  So having L there was fun!  You always learn so much about people when you go out to eat with them and when you go shopping together.  I don't know why but those two activities are really revealing. 

Getting closer to L was wonderful.  If nothing else, this semester where L has been coming around more has been good for one main thing.  L and I seem closer than we have ever been before.  I am actually even looking forward to our Christmas vacation which will be the next time we see each other.  We are even already planning fun things to do together!  Should be fun!  Fingers crossed :-)

Holiday Gift Giving....

Chris and I in Hawaii!  Isn't he so cute!?!?!

 So when my wonderful, sweet, husband and I decided to get married on January1 - I didn't think of one thing... I know must come up with 3 amazing gift ideas all at one time!  Chris's birthday is the beginning of Dec.  Then we have Christmas and now our anniversary.  At first we said we didn't want combined gifts but now it seems to be how it is working out.  I am actually ok... almost excited about it.

But finding gifts for Chris can be a challenge for a couple of reasons.  First - he never says he wants anything.  If he does want something, he usually just buys it.  So I made him stop buying stuff in September.  Secondly, I must find three awesome gifts.  We are still in the phase of spoiling each other rotten.  And I love it!  We buy each other happies and we love to go bigger and better every gift.  But with three holidays right in the row... I'm nervous.  Third, he has this stupid app on his phone that alerts him to spending on our accounts.  I have the same app but I never pay attention to it because I am normally the one spending money.  Anyway... this app tells him where I buy his gifts.  Thank goodness it doesn't tell him what I buy but it definitely tells him where the money is being spent.  So all three of these things make it very complicated to get him a good, surprise, gift!  I went ahead a bit the bullet on his birthday... well actually I tried to be sneaky and use one of our less often used accounts thinking those alerts wouldn't be at the front of the app.  I was wrong. I got home and he asked what I had bought from the specific store.  I promptly told him nothing and walked away!  Now I only have his Christmas and Anniversary gift.  And that is it's own story.

See I thought I knew what I wanted to get Chris. In fact I had some nice things picked out.  Then one day he came home super excited!  He was acting like a little kid with a secret.  He kept going on and on about how much I was going to love my gift.  He said that he had to stretch his budget a bit and combine my Christmas gift and anniversary gift but he didn't care because I was going to be sooo thrilled with his gift. He just knew he would get voted most awesome husband ever! Then he stops... waits a minute and then asks what our budget is anyway.  Well how exactly am I supposed to answer this question... if I say too low then I wont get my super awesome gift and if I say too high I look awful and greedy.  So I turned it back around on him.  You know that didn't work!  He said he wanted to know my opinion.  So I threw out a number.  And he told me he was thinking more.  So I threw out another number.. .he still didn't like it.  Finally he threw out a number.  And let me tell you - none of my previous gift ideas would work now.  (I am purposefully not writing the ideas here just in case Chris decides to read this blog. I might want to use the ideas later!) Anyway I was completely at a lose for a while.  Then I got the great idea to upgrade our home theater system.  Chris is always talking about needing new speakers - better speakers.  So I went and I picked out this super cool system.  But I was smart.  I came home and measured our space first.  It is a good thing I did because the system would not fit in our TV stand and would make our TV look extremely small and out dated.  After thinking about it I decided that instead of getting him a different sound system than the super awesome one I had picked out I should simply update our home theater system - TV and entertainment center - the whole thing.  Now, I can tell you about it because Chris is way too picky for me to pick this big gift out on my own so he knows about it.  And I know he is excited because even though I told him it was a maybe he has already told all his friends about it.  Kinda funny!  I too am super excited about this gift!  I can't wait to give it to him as a combined Christmas and Anniversary gift.  I will definitely upload some before and after pictures of our set-up.

So Chris and I are all set to give each other gifts for the holidays.  What's funny is we are really good about sticking to budgets for everything and everyone else accept for giving to each other.  I have his big gifts and then a ton of little things to go with them.  Crazy I know.

Sometimes I worry that our priorities should not be on spending so much on each other.  I talk to others and they have much smaller limits and place it all on more sentimental gifts.  But Chris and I are sentimental.  I guess we are just still in the phase where we love to spoil each other.  I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing and I am sure many people could tell me a hundred other things we should be saving for or spending our money on.  But for now... we both do well, tithe well, save well, pay our bills, and travel.  So I guess how we spoil each other rotten is OK.  It does still kinda bother me the way some others act like just because we spend money on each other the way we do it makes our gifts superficial or less emotional.  Trust me!  Chris is emotionally invested in his new big screen TV!


I am not just super pumped about Chris's gift I got him this year.  I am also excited about all the gifts I got my family and friends.  I can't wait for them to open them. Besides spending time with family and friends and holiday baking... I think gift giving is one of my favorite parts of this season.  God sure had the right idea.  He gave us the greatest gift ever!  He even wrapped it! :-)