God Bless Us All - Every One!
So we’ve had a pretty great Christmas this year. It’s been busy, but good.
12/15 we headed up to Michigan for Christmas with my family. The trip was absolutely awful! What normally takes 4 hours took over 6. Our average speed (Gary’s car has a thing that calculates it) was 37 miles an hour. The weather on the way was as follows: Snow (plowed somewhat), More Snow (plowed hours ago), Freezing Rain on top of previously fallen Snow (plowed hours ago), Freezing Rain on clear roads, just plain Rain, Freezing Rain, Snow. I’ve never been happier to get out of a car than I was when we got to my parents house! It snowed all night there, and most churches in the area cancelled services! My parents got about a foot of snow from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning.
My brother & sister-in-law and the Angels (my niece & nephew) came over Sunday morning for our Christmas together. We had a yummy lunch, then opened presents. I got some turtlenecks, the original (4-6) Star Wars trilogy, and a framed print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Gary got 3 Star Trek movies (2-4 I think), some nice new dress socks, and new cordless phones (kind of a combo gift, but he likes them a lot more than I do - I’d be happy with corded phones)
Gary & I both took Monday off from work so we could have a nice leisurely drive home during daylight hours, which worked out very well. We got home within 4-1/2 hours, and that included stops for food and gas, so that’s a good trip.
12/24 we headed to Gary’s parents for Christmas with his side of the family. They always have a big family gathering on Christmas Eve with his uncle and cousins. That was a lot of fun and lots of good food. Afterwards, I went to Midnight Mass with Gary & his sister. I almost fell asleep at one point, not like me at all! But I was really tired.
Christmas Day we got up pretty late (9-ish) and after his brother and nephew arrived we opened presents. We must have been VERY good this year, because we got some pretty big gifts. Gary got new Rockport shoes, I got golf shoes. We both got a couple movies. Gary got another cordless phone, this one with an answering machine included (we’re going to keep all of them and just have corded phones as back up in case the power goes out). I got a print of Monet’s Water Lilies. The big gift was a combo Christmas & Birthday gift (for both of us) from his sister of a camcorder, discs and a tripod. Totally unexpected! Then we had a big Christmas dinner of ham, potatoes, corn, etc.
We headed back here Monday morning.
Today is Gary’s sister’s birthday, so we’re going over to her house for dinner tonight. His parents, brother & nephew are all driving down for the weekend. I’ve heard that stroganoff is on the menu for dinner, which I’m sure will include mushrooms, so I’m already preparing myself to have to sort fungus out of my food.
Gary & I are going to celebrate our Christmas on New Year’s Eve. We aren’t going nuts buying each other stuff, but the last few years we haven’t gotten each other anything so we’d have more money to buy stuff for our families. This year, we kept some aside so we could do some shopping for each other.
So there’s the big holiday update for 2007!
Hope yours was happy!