Round 1 of 3

Christmas! Wahoo for Christmas! I was SO ready for this break to get here! I need a break from students who were equally ready to be done with the semester as I was. Brian gets a nice long break from work too! On the 24th we usually go see a movie with my parents and brother, but there weren't any movies that sounded good, so we decided to play some board games instead. My dad (who is one of the most competitive people ever) won Clue. I was mad because he guessed the correct answer and I was going to win on my next turn! We played Scene It after that - my mom and I were WAAAY ahead until the guys got some lucky rolls of the dice and went ahead of us - and won. :( After losing, Brian and I went back to our apartment so that we could change clothes before heading to Christmas Eve service. As we were driving up to the church we were talking about how we should have talked with our friends Andrew and Amanda and asked what service they were attending. When we pulled in the parking lot we were EXTREMELY excited to find that they had arrived about 30 seconds before us! The service was good - but I'm fairly sure I drifted off to sleep - it did start at 11:00. Whoops. We came home, went to bed and I actually slept through the night. This might only be the second year that's happened. I'm generally too excited for Christmas morning to sleep through the night - and I always have to go downstairs and peek under the tree. I'm a snooper. However, we slept in our own apartment. It was the first time ever that I hadn't slept in my parents house on Christmas Eve. I thoroughly enjoyed my own bed.

We finally made it to my parents and started opening gifts around 10:30. I love that I am now far more excited to see how people react to gifts given to them than I am to receive gifts. I had spent some time shopping with my dad for gifts for mom and I couldn't wait to see if she liked some of the things I/we had picked out. My dad got her a pair of uggs. I'm jealous. She looked pretty cute wearing them. My favorite gift was a cookbook, given to me by my husband. He went through tons of recipes on allrecipes.com and made me a cookbook - complete with pictures and all. It is SO impressive. I thought it was an actual cookbook that he purchased until I saw the recipe category labels printed in my favorite font. It's full of recipes for foods that I love! It's a perfect custom cookbook. I love it.

Once we finished opening presents my dad told us that my Aunt Chris had passed away in the early morning hours. She's had cancer for a long time, and it was expected, but very sad.

Round 2 is tonight with the Foxworthy siblings. Derin can't make it to Florida with the rest of us, so we're going to get together tonight.

Round 3 - sunny Florida. Can't wait!