New Year's Day

Chris's family joined us on New Year's day for Clemson Football and celebrating Christmas and a birthday. Between Christmas and New Year's we have my dad's birthday and Chris's birthday. It was so much fun to have everyone and we made sure that everyone ate their collard's and black eyed peas. Think we got a tablespoon in each kid!!! Don't think Cooper appreciated the gag gifts of empty boxes and he guessed they were empty - which let me know - I can't trick him very easily!!! Enjoy the slide show!!!!

Christmas 2008
Christmas break for Joe started Dec. 10th. I went and picked up he and his roommate - let Elizabeth skip school. It was great to have him home. Amazing how just having him in the house makes it all better. Of course, even if the kids are at sleepovers it doesn't feel normal. He did come home with a new habit of staying up really late. It was hard the first week he was home with Elizabeth still in school. I did let her skip an afternoon after a dentist appointment and we met Joe at the mall and went to Bravo to eat and do some christmas shopping. We made many trips to mall before Christmas. One day we were there and a fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the mall. Now that was interesting. Never have done that before. One other thing that has never happened before is mom getting a black eye. Thanks to Chief about 3 days before Christmas as I went down to get the puppy out of his running rant, he hit my eye, threw my glasses off and within 24 hours - I had a black eye. Thankfully for me - I could cover it up with make up for the most part!!!Christmas Eve came and we started a new tradition this year. We usually go to the movies and out to dinner but this year we went to the Christmas eve service at Church and to dinner. It was so nice. This year it just was appropriate and a natural place for us to be. Lots of changes in our lives in 2008. We still got home early enough to get into our Christmas Eve jammies, wrap gifts and enjoy the evening. Christmas morning came with me actually having time to get up, make coffee, get make up on before everyone else got up. Very slow moving crowd these days. We opened gifts, enjoyed some coffee and danish, played Apples to Apples and put on the Dark Knight until 11.

Around that time we headed to Ma Mere's, Mary, Mom's house to have brunch and spend time over there. Normandie made the trip and so did Jerry. That was lucky that Jerry was able to make. He wasn't going to be able to at first.

We went home for awhile and got ready to go to Grandad Putt's, Jerry, Daddy's house to have dinner and spend time there. Paul joined us that night and unfortunately John and Nicole were with her family.

The day ended with all of us tired but feeling very wealthy and wondering what all this talk of recession is about!!!! We were blessed.

O.k. these girls still wonder why they didn't win the
ugly sweater contest at youth group!!!!