Holiday Update.

So many things to catch up on so I guess I'd just better start before I get even more behind. :) First, I'm not sure if I already blogged about this (I guess I could check but that would take a good bit of effort, of which I don't have a lot of right now), but last month Cody and I celebrated our sort-of 11th anniversary (we haven't dated the entire 11 years though - there are a few years in there where we did our own thing). We started dating 11 years ago - wow. I've known Cody for over 1/3 of my life! Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool. It's neat to sit around and talk about things we did and tell stories of stuff we did back then - the greatest thing is laughing about all the dumb stuff we did - and boy is there a lot of dumb stuff to laugh about. :)
Second, in case I haven't mentioned this as well, I went to see the musical Wicked last month. It was too great to even describe - phenomenal. Even if you hate musicals and think the premise is stupid (it's the pre-quel to The Wizard of Oz - sort of) you should go see it - it really suprised me. So now I'm obsessed with the soundtrack and carry it with me whereever I go - car, work, home, car, work.
Third, Christmas was here - and gone again. It was one of the greatest Christmases and Christmas seasons yet. First, I was so much less stressed this year. Last year I was insanely stressed and had a really hard time enjoying the time leading up to the holiday- only a few weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, two trips to Florida (driving) in less then a month, a looming wedding with SO much left to do, a zillion holiday parties (of which I said no to zero of them), an ice storm culmunating in 6 days of no power in the freezing cold, and a frillion things to do. This year we skipped Thanksgiving in Florida and stayed here, relaxing and regrouping. We had snow but no ice storm. There was an extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The wedding was over (thank GOD!) so we didn't have that. And just in general I took it easier. We said no to several Christmas parties and only said yes to those things we really wanted or needed to do. So all in all the pre-Christmas was a lot easier. Even the Christmas in Florida was less stressful. We were going to leave on Friday but I worked really late to get everything done before we left so we didn't leave until Saturday - not at 4am like we usually try to do when we leave on the weekend, but a nice, comfortable noon. :) So we didn't get into Tally until 1am, but we were at least relaxed about it. The days before Christmas I spend shopping with my mom and Cody hung out with his parents, sister, her husband and their two kids. We also simplified our life by both staying at Cody's parents house instead of me at my moms and him with his parents - not only was that a pain but I always felt like when we left we hardly got to see each other while we were there (I used to joke and tell him in the car ride back "Wow - fancy seeing you here - I didn't know you were in Florida too."). And while the purpose of the trip is to see family, it is our vacation too and I'd like to see Cody on our days off as well since those tend to be few and far between. So that was much easier on both of us. Christmas Eve we spent the day with my mom and grandma, wrapping presents and hanging out and then went to Cody's family for the annual celebration. First we celebrate Larry's birthday (Cody's sister's husband) who had the fortune/misfortune of being born on Christmas Eve. While I think that would be incredibly annoying he enjoys it so that's nice. We do his birthday and dinner first and then have CHRISTMAS! It was fabulous. Our niece and nephew are old enough now to really "get" the whole Christmas, presents and Santa thing so that was need to watch them enjoy everything. They got a ton of toys - which is not only great for them, but great for Cody and I since we've called "dibs" on all their old toys to give our kids, if and when we have them. We plan to seriously never buy our kids toys - just use our niece and nephew's old toys - the little tykes will never know the difference. Then we'll use the money we saved to (1) hire a nanny, (2) ship the kids to Florida to spend the week/month(s) with their grandparents and (3) travel, both with and without the munchkins. It was really cool watching them rip open the presents and play with everything.
Then on Christmas we watched the kids open their "Santa" gifts - more toys! It's hillarious the way they dig the whole Santa thing. Cody swears he won't tell our kids about Santa because it's "lying" to your kids and that's just wrong. :) We'll see about that. Then we went over to my mom's and just hung out there all day. We typically do Christmas there in the morning but since my brother and his girlfriend were at her family's in Pensacola we wanted to wait for them. So we hung out with them and then went to my aunt's house for a rousing dose of family fun. A great dinner and then fun with presents. My uncle's family was there too so that was fun. Then it was back to mom's/grandma's to do those presents (when brother and girlfriend got back). More family fun! We had a great time and got some really cool stuff.
On Wednesday we went out to Sopchoppy to see my dad, the boat, and the new Wii. The five of us adults literally played Wii for hours - golf, baseball, boxing, pool, tennis, ping pong - it was the funniest thing you've ever seen. I was cracking up watching everyone play - boxing was the best - man do you look stupid playing that game - but it's super fun. :) We went on a boat ride up the Sopchoppy River, though it was a little chilly for the Florida folks. It was great to see water again (we have no water here to speak of) and see green stuff. While a lot of the trees were bare, there was still a lot more green then there is here (STL is a million shades of gray right now). Then when our step-mom got home we had a great dinner and more presents! We had a fantastic time hanging out with them - usually we only see them for a few hours sandwiched in between other Thanksgiving and Christmases we have to be at so it was neat to spend a whole day with them.
Thursday and Friday we hung out with my mom/grandma during the day and then Cody's family at night. Then we left to come home on Saturday. It was great to see everyone and catch up, and as usual the time just flew by before we knew it. It was great to see the kids and how much they've grown - our 2 year old nephew who was barely talking at the wedding is now a total chatterbox - he can hold full conversations with you - quite the little talker. All in all it was a great trip!
Okay, now my hands hurt from typing so I'll catch up on the rest later. :)