Three Days of Christmas!!!

On December 23rd Anthony and I headed to Wauchula for three days of Christmas celebration. Tuesday night we went to my Nana's for my families Christmas gift exchange. Everyone was there this year except Daniel Cook who had to work a night shift at the mines. We exchange gift cards every year playing the "dirty santa" game. You may know it by some other name, but the basic concept is to draw numbers and then number 1 opens a gift. Number 2 can take number 1's gift or open a new gift. It continues that way until the end of the game. It's always a lot of fun and there is usually a gift card everyone wants. This year's hot choice was a 30 minute massage from Master's Touch. Anthony and I ended up with Target and Barnes and Nobel!

After leaving Nana's Anthony and I went to Jessica's house for a few minutes of hanging out. It's so hard to get to see everyone now that we all live in different parts of the state! It was nice to see Jessica and Kelly, even though it was only for a few minutes.

Christmas Eve we stayed home most of the day and helped my mom bake cookies. Well, I helped and Anthony played Wii. My parents have a Wii and we aren't fortunate enough to own our own so we have to enjoy it when we can! Anthony did pop in and help me make and decorate spritz cookies. All of the cookies turned out fantastically!

That evening we went with my parents to church for the candlelight service. There we were able to see Damon and Alecia's new baby, Caleb. He is beautiful! After church we had Christmas Eve dinner with my parents. It was delicious! My mom made prime rib, twice baked potatoes, and green beans. All of it was very tasty!

The dining room for Christmas Eve...


After dinner we opened our Christmas pj's from my parents. This year I had blue monkeys with santa hats. Anthony's had Christmas trees! It was his first year celebrating the pj tradition my family has. Every Christmas Eve my mom gives us our Christmas pj's and we wear them all day on Christmas. My aunt Susan also let us open all the gifts from her. We received so many cool gifts!! We've been really into game night lately and we got Pictionary, Taboo, Apples to Apples, and Rumikub! My aunt also gave Anthony some grilling accessories that we are looking forward to using!! I got a free night in an Orlando hotel that we'll be using for our anniversary trip coming up! There was so much more I'll just list a few: reed diffuser, tanning lotion, gift cards, and perfume.

Christmas morning we woke up kinda early to have a terrific breakfast! Note the sleepy look of our eyes!


My mom made her traditional pancakes with hot apples and dad grilled sausage and bacon. It was all so tasty!! Then we all settled in the living room to open our presents!





First we opened our "Santa" gifts. Anthony got a Rubix cube that is electronic and I got a Pixos. Yes, me and every other 4 year old out there got a Pixos Studio for Christmas this year! I loved those things as a child. If you grew up in the 80's then you know what they are. My mom aka Santa, said she couldn't resist buying it for me because of how happy they made me as a child. I'm excited to have a whole week off to play with it!



After opening all our gifts and spending most of the afternoon with my family, we packed everything into the car and came back to Fort Myers. Anthony opened all the gifts from his parents. The most interesting thing that happened during that was the remote control spider. I am deathly afraid of spiders and all things involving spiders. Anthony was letting me help him unwrap his presents and unknowingly gave me a remote control spider to unwrap. I only tore off a small amount of paper before screaming and flinging the present away from me. It was amusing! Here he is with his presents!




He and I were going to open our presents on the morning of the 26th but we just couldn't wait! We opened our gifts from each other last night and had so much fun! I loved all the gifts he gave me, and he really liked his too. I took pictures of us with all of them wrapped and unwrapped and a few of us unwrapping. They tell the story...

 

I think that this was the best Christmas I have ever had! It was very amazing to be able to share the entire thing with Anthony and have him be a part of my family traditions. I hope all of you also had an amazing Christmas!

Ready for xmas

This is the first post from me (Anthony) on here. I'm not much for writing on things like this, mostly because I think people just don't care to know this much about me, but whatever. Anyway... ready for christmas to come and excited to be sharing them with alisha. Hope everyones christmas and new years is great. My one and only wish from you guys is stop the politically correct bs. It's merry christmas, not "happy holidays". If you're jewish, wish people happy hanukkah, or whatever else you do... or I might cut you :). Anyway, the police still haven't found my car, so if you still got some money left over from the holidays that you're not sure what to do with, I wouldn't complain if you bought me a car. Just saying...

Happy Holidays!

It's been a while since I have blogged so I have a lot to catch up on!!

Since my last post we have had good news and bad news. I'll get the bad news over first. Anthony's car was stolen the weekend after Thanksgiving and we still haven't recovered it. The police told us there is a really good chance of getting it back, but at this point we're not sure if it will be in that great of condition if we do ever get it back. Thankfully, we live very close to his job (a 2 minute walk) so he can still get to work without too much trouble.

On to the good news....

My first chorus concert with my new students went very well last Thursday. I had been so nervous about their behavior and their sound, but they ended up making me very happy. I watched the video with them on Friday and they were also very pleased with the way that it turned out. We have a week left before Christmas break and we're going to spend it picking out new songs.



My younger brother proposed to his girlfriend Meg on December 9th. I will finally have a sister! Everyone is very excited for them. I think the wedding will be sometime around May 2010.



Anthony and I went to Busch Gardens this weekend so that we could use our pass one more time before they expired. It was a great day, a little chilly, but the lines weren't too long. The Christmas decorations were also very pretty.



Now we are just finishing up all of our Christmas shopping and getting ready to spend the holidays with family. Here are some pictures of how the apartment looks for Christmas!!