So... much... to... tell...

It's overwhelming to come back to blogging after not writing for over a week. How do you sum up all that you've been doing? I guess I won't even try to remember everything.

Our Christmas was pretty uneventful, which was very nice. Christmas Eve is when we do Christmas with Stephen's family here in town, and it's something I always look forward to. It's really laidback. We eat, of course, and then we do a White elephant gift exchange. I bring a gag gift every year, which I think some people would rather me buy something useful, but I refuse to change a tradition. This year, I gave this little gal. Kathee at work had received it somehow, I can't remember how, and was trying to get rid of it, so I snatched it up for our party. Poor Shannon, Stephen's 14-year old cousin ended up with it. Sorry!! Stephen ended up with a set of three types of barbecue sauce (yum!!) and I got the present that Stephen brought, which he really wanted - $10 worth of his favorite candy. There was nothing else I really wanted so I took that so he'd be satisfied. After gift giving, I play the piano while we sing carols. That's my favorite part! This year we sang more than ever. I already had a cold but my voice was really hoarse after singing what was probably more than 100 songs!! I love it though.

Christmas day was very relaxing for us because we didn't have anything to do besides go to Granny's for dinner at 5:00 pm. I felt like we should spend the day undecorating but it seems that is against Stephen's religion, so instead I made french toast and bacon for breakfast and we stayed in our pajamas until time to go, and just watched movies and packed our suitcases for our upcoming trip.

We went to Georgia to see Stephen's family from December 26-January 1. It was so hard to come back to work after such a long, relaxing vacation. The only plans we ever have when we go to Georgia are to sleep in, hit the after-Christmas sales, play lots of board games, and sit by the fire pit at least twice. Oh, and party down for my birthday and Jenn & Josh's birthday (which is January 11)!! You might remember how we handle gift exchanges with our Georgia family. Well, funny enough, Stephen and I drew each others names! So we actually got presents for each other this year! His big present from me was this. He was so surprised and really loves it!! He got me everything on my list, which was candy, nail files, and Crystal Light. Yeah, I'm a cheapo. But I love it all!! Corky and Leila bought us Trivial Pursuit that has both adult and kids cards. After playing, we all agreed that we really like the kids questions! Haha! More on our level! The games they had bought for the family this year were Scattegories and Password. We played both of those a couple of times. Scattegories is one of my all-time favorite games, and I really liked Password too, but it was hard!

While we were down there we hit up a lot of sales, of course, and were lucky enough to get our crib set for the nursery on sale. This is what it looks like, although the crib we are getting is white.

It's two different colors of pink and a lime green. Stephen and I went on Saturday to pick out the paint and we are actually going with lime green. I was scared at first, but when we took the sample home it's actually much darker than the lime green you're envisioning. Trust me, I can read your mind.

We went bowling one day, which wasn't fun because I lost. We were able to eat Zaxby's, Five Guys, and Fuddruckers on this trip which totally made it worth it. We watched a couple of movies, including Hancock (not so great) and Horton Hears a Who (go rent it! now!!). We were supposed to watch the UFC fight on the 27th, but after a few fights the program started messing up. We called customer service and I volunteered to stay on the line. After 46 minutes of being on hold, and it was almost 1:00am, we decided it wasn't worth it and went to bed. Also, the food was gone. So what was the point!? So we had to watch the fights we missed online. Bummer! Sunday the 28th Stephen, Jenn and I went to my family's Christmas celebrations. We were able to eat out and still had time to run to Marshalls with mom and hit up the sales there before our Christmas party!! Woot woot! The Christmas party was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, Grandma slept through it. She had a bad fall the day before and was on some pain medicine. How she slept through violinists, singers, piano players, and over twenty people gabbing away, I don't know. But a good time was had by all.

On the 31st, we found out that my grandmother had another fall and this time she was in the hospital. We were so glad that we were still in Georgia so if we needed to we could run to the hospital or anything. Stephen really wanted to extend our trip (even though he somehow got a "family leave day" for Friday - GO FIGURE!!) and I did too, to tell you the truth, but Grandma was doing well and I knew I had to go back to work sometime. So we left on the 1st as planned, but stopped to see her at the hospital on our way out. She was very alert when we went in to see her. She commented frequently on mom's pretty dangly earrings and how pretty mine and Stephen's teeth were, which I thought was very sweet of her! We were able to sing to her some and visit with her for 30 minutes, which I'm really glad we got to do. She is doing much better now, in a private room instead of the ICU, and most likely will be shipped off to do some physical therapy in the next couple of days. She is such a tough lady and I am amazed by the strength she still has at 88 years.

Well, I am probably forgetting lots of stuff from our trip. I have some pictures to post - some updated belly pictures and some baby clothes I got on sale (those pictures are more for mom than anyone) so I will try to do that soon.

Oh yeah, mom called the day we got back from Georgia to let me know that Harris Teeter was having triple coupons again. I ended up making two trips on Friday and two trips on Saturday. Is that obsessive? I don't think so. Plus, they restocked on Saturday so it really made it worth my while. We hadn't grocery shopped in several weeks so my numbers aren't as good as they could have been, but I'm still happy with them. I spent $106 and saved $110. We won't have to do any grocery shopping for a long time, I'm happy to say!

Oh yeah (again), I think I had told some of you that I decided not to do school this upcoming semester because of saving money, not wanting to overwhelm myself with schoolwork, etc. Well, after thinking about it (and after getting an A in my last class when I was just sure I was going to get a B) I decided literally at the last minute that I am going to do one more semester. I will still finish by early March and I'm only doing one class, so the workload shouldn't be too much. Stephen is finishing his degree this semester and he is doing 18 hours so he'll be overloaded with schoolwork. I figured, if he's doing that much, maybe I should go on and stick out a small load just to get another class out of the way.

Okay, I think that's everything for now.