Catching up after the holidays

Well, I'm back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year! We certainly did, even with a little minor hiccup to our Christmas plans. Please excuse the long post... I've just got a lot to catch up on!

As I predicted, I did spend the days leading up to Christmas frantically working on our bonus room and wrapping gifts. And, we were able to get more done to the room upstairs than I believed possible. I still have a few things I need to sew and we are well on our way to having a really fun room.

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Part of our "bonus room" gift to each other was a Wii. Now, we were thinking way ahead and ordered our Wii on Amazon back in the middle of November so we wouldn't have to be scouring the stores for one. Jay, of course, wanted to open it right away but I continually convinced him that we needed to at least wait until the week of Christmas so it would really feel like a Christmas present. We both had these grand ideas that my family and us and the kids would play it all weekend long and how much fun that would be. My sister even got Jay and I matching Wii PJs because we had talked it up so much. So Jay was able to hold out and waited until Christmas Eve. At 10 pm on Christmas Eve, Jay hauls out the box and starts to hook everything up. Can you believe it......IT DIDN'T WORK!!! What??? Never in a million years did we think it wouldn't work! What a major bummer. Jay even tried to call Nintendo but they were closed and wouldn't be open until the 26th. So we had a Wii-less Christmas.

I'm proud of my hubby though, because as soon as he saw the kids come down our stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left for them, he cheered right up. Sure, there was the occasional sad comment so we would feel a little sorry for him, but we all had a wonderful Christmas in spite of the little bump in our plans. Jay was able to get in touch with Nintendo on Friday and they had a replacement to us by Monday at lunch. So kudos to Nintendo for being cool about replacing it with no problems. After the whole computer crashing incident then the defective Wii, 2008 was not our year for electronics.

My family came in on Christmas Eve and we had a wonderful time with them. Thanks for coming to Tennessee Pop, Gigi, and Kay Kay. We loved having you here.

We were able to fit some gingerbread house and train making in on Christmas Eve. Here are the proud kids with their creations.

Sweet kids in their Christmas PJs.

Santa brought Audrey a Kitt Kittredge doll (Because she looks like Audrey) with a closet of clothes and a beauty parlor chair.

Reed got a cool fire house with fire truck, ambulance, police cars, and rescue helicopters. You can see Lauren in the background there trying to climb up her new slide!

Mama got Daddy and Reed some Hulk fists to fight with. Here is Reed trying them out with Pop. Reed likes them a lot but Lauren loves them. She'll put them both on and come up to you, beat them on your lap while she growls at you. Super hilarious!

Pop, Gigi, Kay Kay and Audrey playing a dominoes game Audrey got for Christmas. She's pretty good at it!

OK, so this has gotten kind of long and I'm getting sleepy so I'm going to continue this tomorrow.

Happy "late" New Year Everyone!