A Very Merry Christmas

A little late I know, but I've just now got some time to sit down and write. We had a really great Christmas. Christmas Eve we always do at Grandma and Poppy's house. She has a holiday open house with lots of yummy food. The kids get to open their presents between my family.



The girls were really excited, Grandma got them all tickets to Hannah Montana in Austin on January 24th. They were so surprised! But guess who gets to drive them, ME! I'm actually really excited.



Matthew loved his Polar Express train set and his Imaginext jungle my mom and sister got him. He was packed up and ready to go home to open it 5 minutes later! LOL



Santa brought the kids lots of goodies. Bianca's favorite were her UGG boots, new purple cel phone and Nintendo DS. Matthew loved his Imaginext pirate ship, octopus, and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bus :-)

Christmas day we always spend at my house. Everybody comes over about 2PM we eat, drink, eat some more, eat again, and then play games. This year it was Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture. We played guys against girls. The guys won, but only because we can't get passed the sports category! I really wanted to play our new game Are You Smarter Than 5th Grader but I was outnumbered!

Santa Claus is Coming

What a relief! I'm am almost completely done. All my shopping and wrapping are complete. I should not have to step foot in a store except for groceries between now and Christmas! It feels so good. Tomorrow the kids and I are baking cookies all day, they are so excited. My nieces and nephew will probably be here too, thank God because I will need the help. I am picking up my Christmas cards tonight from the printer and those will go out on Monday. For some reason I feel so much more relaxed and less stressed this year. Maybe it's because I didn't start shopping in October and I don't have near the amount of presents to wrap.

I've got 3 more Christmas parties for the year. One tonight at my brother's house, one on Wednesday for work, and one next Saturday for the McCaffrey Stevenson annual holiday wine party. That one usually kicks my butt and gets a bit wild and crazy! I'm up to it though. I have not had a good time in a while and could use a few glasses of wine :-)

We have decided though that next Christmas it is back to Disney World again. That was the most stress free relaxing Christmas we have ever had. It was so much fun. My whole family went, we did not exchange any presents, no Christmas Eve or Christmas dinners to cook and just a fun time for everybody. Not to mention I think it is the best time to be at Disney World. Disney World is magical every day of the year but when it is decorated for Christmas it is phenomenal. So after the first of year we are going to start booking for next year, I can't wait!

Annual Petruska Christmas Party

Last night we attended the Petruska annual Christmas party. We all look forward to this every year. It is so much fun especially for the kids because they get a special visit from Santa. Santa is wonderful, he reads stories to the kids, plays the saxaphone and we all sing Christmas songs with him. Then each kid and family gets to sit on his lap and take pictures. It so beats standing in line at the mall! Here is Grandma and Poppy and all the grandkids Matthew and his "girlfriend" Victoria aka Tuchi! Finally, here is some video we took of everybody singing with Santa Clause!

Edelweiss

Today was Jerry's birthday. I won't say how old he is but he definitely headed to 40in the next few years :-) We went to eat at Edelweiss in Fort Worth which is a really good German food restaurant. Jerry loves this place. We only go once a year and its usually around the holidays. OMG the food is so heavy but very good. We all left there stuffed as usual and brought home enough food for lunch and dinner tomorrow night. We then went back to our house and had his favorite cake "Linda's Fudge Cake" from Cheescake Factory, YUM!!!

Here is a picture of Jerry before he cut his cake. This thing is like 7 layers and weighs a lot! I took a picture of the nutritional info it has something crazy like 1400 calories a slice!






I then stopped at Garden Ridge to get more ribbon for wrapping presents. I am so addicted to ribbon and wrapping paper I think I need help! I cannot tell you how much ribbon I have gone through in the last month wrapping all my Arbonne products for the craft show and gifts from customer orders. I've got to get started wrapping all the presents I bought yesterday on our shopping spree.

I felt really bad because Jerry insisted on buying me a pair of Ugg boots. We were there to Christmas shop and buy him some birthday presents not me. Well we both ended up buying Ugg boots, LOL. He loves his and I love mine. They feel so good on your feet. If you have not tried on a pair you need to, you will be hooked the minute they go on your feet. Now I want the pink furry Ugg slippers for Christmas :-)

Christmas Shopping!

I'm on a roll tonight. I guess I'm making up for slacking off. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow and Jerry and I going to get some shopping done. I have not done any shopping and everybody around me is completely surprised. Last year I started in October. BIG BIG BIG mistake. I bought way too much stuff. My kids were happy but OMG I swore I would never do that again. I bought stuff I had forgot about and just kept on buying and buying. I seriously have stuff in the playroom from last year that is not yet opened. So I'm taking another approach this year.

I am looking forward to it though. It just does not feel like Christmas until I buy that first present and wrap it :-)

Digital Scrapbooking

First of all let me start out by saying I'm total blog slacker, but in my defense I have been super busy. It's the end of semester and I'm getting ready for finals and wrapping up papers and assignments. In addition I have been super busy with Arbonne the last couple of weeks. Jen and I did Keller Craft Show Saturday and Sunday. Didn't sell a lot but we had a lot of fun! Bianca came with me on Sunday and she did all her holiday shopping (with my money of course, LOL). She got her face painted and it looked so cute. Her whole face was painted like a snowman.



So on to my topic of digital scrapbooking. I love to scrapbook but I hate to say I am so far behind. I have hundreds maybe thousands of dollars invested in paper scrapbooking the problem is I hate the mess. It is so darn complicated to get everything out, get organized, scrap for a few hours and then put it all away. Anyone who knows me knows I'm anal about messes and could not stand to keep it out for any extended period of time. So I have not done it in a while. So I've been talking to my scrapbook buddies and we have been researching digital. Now again if anybody knows me this is so "me". I am so into everything paperless. People at work are amazed how much stuff I do not have on my desk. I hate clutter and I hate paper. So I've decided after Christmas I'm going to get started but now I have to decide how. Do I go the easy way and just get some easy programs like creative memories, scrapbook factor, lifeTimez or do I invest in Photoshop and really learn it? I'm not sure yet but I have to decide fast since I'm asking for this stuff for Christmas.

The funny part is now I have everybody else on the digital bandwagon and we are all going to do it. So I can just picture our scrapbook parties with wine and laptops. How cool is that? No huge boxes and bins to lug around! :-)