Merry Christmas!

Wow, this weekend has flown by in a blur! On Christmas Eve I got off of work at noon which was very nice. I came home and finished wrapping Ryan's presents before he got home at 2:30. We left our house a little before 4:00 and stopped at his friends house for a quick visit and then we headed over to his parent's house for an early dinner. After dinner we went to the candlelight service at church and after that we went to see some Christmas lights with his parents. We finally got home at about 9:30pm and we watched A Christmas Story.

Santa visited out house that night and so in the morning we opened our presents and Ryan immediately started playing with his new toys. Libby came home and she got to open all of her presents from Santa. Santa was VERY good to her this year! :-) She got everything that she wanted. She was overjoyed ripping through all of the wrapping paper and tearing off bows to see what all she received. Santa brough her everything from her wish list: a DSi game system and game, a hula hoop, and a Puppy in My Pocket...we got her three zhu zhu pets and the zhu zhu car (she gets the playhouse and some other add-on for her birthday in a few days). She got some Build-A-Bear stuff, another DSi game from her godmother, and that is just the beginning of the list. But after all of that would you like to know what she was happiest about receiving? It was at the bottom of her stocking and the very last thing that she saw (we always do stockings last). It was a jar of peanut butter. I've never seen her that happy before! :-) She has told me for many months now that her dream is that the day that she gets her driver's license she is going to drive herself to the grocery store, buy a jar of peanut butter, and a plastic spoon, and then sit in her car and eat the peanut butter right out of the jar. Well, Santa thought she shouldn't have to wait until she is 16 to live out her dream. Here are the pictures of her finding the peanut butter (and you have to excuse the blurriness of the pictures but she was literally hopping around on the ground and flailing all around). By far her favorite gift...

Today we were out for about half of the day and when we got home I started cleaning up the kitchen. A few minutes later I went back to her room and this is what I saw...

Dream fulfilled!!

Spending time with friends...

Last night Ryan and I met up with a couple of his friends who are home visiting for Christmas and we went to the Gator basketball game. Unfortunately, the Gators lost...they were up by 1 point and with 1.8 seconds left in the game South Alabama scored a basket. :-( So, we lost by 1 point which really stunk. From there we headed over to a restaurant/bar (The Top for those of you in Gainesville) and some other of his friends who are home visiting for Christmas joined us. There were 15 of us sitting, chatting, laughing, drinking (not me of course!), and having a great time. By the time we left there at 12:30am my face hurt from laughing so hard. But as soon as we stepped outside into the cold weather (it was in the 30s!!!!) it wasn't just my face that hurt...it was my whole body because I wasn't dressed for weather that cold! I took off running to the car leaving Ryan far behind me. :-) He finally got to the car and we drove home and I was snug in my bed by 1:00am. I'm sleepy today but it was definitely worth it to be out having so much fun with friends - especially when we don't get to see them that often since they live out of state!

Goodbye Strawberry Tea Room

Karen, me, Mrs. Virginia, and Debs

Today Debs, Karen, and I went to the Farewell Tea at Strawberry Tea Room. As I mentioned before, after 6 years of serving us tea Mrs. Virginia sadly had to close her tea room so today was our last tea at Strawberry. She decided to serve just one flavor of tea today instead of letting everyone choose separately off of the tea menu and fittingly (for me) she chose to serve Angel's Dream (my FAVORITE!) to everyone. The food was delicious as ever. After the tea service we presented Virginia with a present from us. Debs, Karen, Tara, and I are a Pink Hat Group (which is the younger version of the Red Hat Group). We named our group Strawberries from Pink to Red since our usual tea room to go to as a group was Strawberry. And the Pink to Red was because we are starting out as Pink Hats and we'll eventually become Red Hats when we turn 50. Sooooo, since we named our Pink Hat group after her tea room we wanted to give Virginia a pink hat to remember us by and to make her an honorary member. She opened the gift and when we explained why we were giving her the hat she just teared up and started to cry. I gave her a hug and she hugged me so tight and wouldn't let go. :-(

Goodbye Mrs. Virginia.

Goodbye Angel's Dream Tea.

Goodbye Ginger's Chicken Salad.

Goodbye Strawberry Tea Room.

December is flying by!

Wow, I can't believe that it's already December 18th! How does this month fly by so quickly? There is always so much that I want to do in December and I never have time to do it all. :-( This week we've been busy with our usual daily things: work and school. In the evening we get home and I love coming around the corner to our house and seeing it all lit up with Christmas lights. That just makes my day every day! We eat dinner and I go over Libby's homework and she takes a quick bath and then all week we've been having Family Movie Night! We've watched some cute movies and on Tuesday night we watched Elf. I LOVE Elf and even Mr. Grinch (aka Ryan) loves that movie so it's nice to have a Christmas movie that he actually likes. Well, last night was Libby's last night at home until Christmas so she got to choose what we would watch last night and she really wanted to watch Elf again so we did. :-)

This morning Libby was up and eager to get to school because today is their holiday party in class. I kept trying to slow her down because I was sad that after I dropped her off at class I wouldn't see her again until Christmas. This totally sucks. For the first time in her life she won't wake up with me on Christmas morning and I hate it. Talk about a blue Christmas! But once she gets home Christmas day everything will be much better...she'll get to go through her presents and then Christmas evening Ryan's parents are coming over for dinner so I have a lot to look forward to...it's just Christmas Eve (my FAVORITE day of the year) and Christmas morning that I'm dreading.

Speaking of dreading...tomorrow Debs, Karen, and I are going to Strawberry Tea Room (my favorite tea room ever!) for the Farewell Tea. The owner is having to close down the tea room and I couldn't be more sad about it. I just so happened to call her last weekend to make plans for my birthday tea next month and she told me that she was closing down December 23rd. She said that she was all booked and couldn't get us in one last time for tea. I hung up and passed the sad news along to Karen and Debs and then a little later I called back and was able to talk our way into three seats at the farewell tea. We are all three so happy to get to go to Strawberry tomorrow but it's also very sad that it'll be our last time there!!

Christmas with friends!

Today Libby and I had plans to go out and take some pictures of her (I was just in the mood to shoot some pictures of my beautiful girl!) and then meet up with Debs and Karen for lunch and then head to a Christmas parade. Well....it started raining and never stopped. Libby and I left the house at 8:00am this morning and it was raining but I was holding out hope that it wouldn't be raining in Gainesville or it would at least let up after an hour or so. No such luck. So, we went to Kohl's for some shopping and then we headed over to the mall to window-shop. We met up with Debs and Karen for lunch at a place that we hadn't been to before but I'd heard nothing but great things about. I liked the setting...very relazed and comfy and I loved the Christmas decorations up around the restaurant and the Christmas music playing and we were sitting near the fireplace so the setting was just wonderful. We exchanged Christmas gifts while we waited for our food and Libby was very excited when she opened her Razor scooter that Debs and Karen got for her. She was ready to leave and head home right then! :-)

After lunch Debs and Karen headed back home and Libby and I headed to Alachua for the Christmas parade. There wasn't all that much to it and there were hardly any people there watching it but I'm sure that is because it rained up until time for the parade to start. But it wasn't bad watching the little floats go by and having people on each float ride by and wish you a Merry Christmas while they ran up and gave Libby candy. :-)

After the parade we drove back to Newberry and I took some pictures of Libby in a few places that I've been wanting for a long time to take her so that I could take her picture. I have a VERY beautiful daughter! :-)

After the pictures we came home and Libby went out to ride her scooter and almost immediately it started raining so she only got about 3 minutes on it before it was time to head back inside. Since we got back home we've been watching Christmas movies and just enjoying some relaxing time together!

Family movie night

Tonight we made hot chocolate and had family movie night....at 8pm was A Charlie Brown Christmas and then at 8:30 was Disney's new Prep & Landing. It was funny watching a cartoon from 1965 immediately followed by a cartoon from 2009! Prep & Landing was cute...Libby definitely liked it. She is looking forward to Shrek the Halls tomorrow night!

Christmas activities

There are benefits to living in a small town. For example, tonight our little town had the businesses along Main Street all decorated in lights and people came out to drink hot chocolate, hear carolers, the kids made Christmas ornaments, and they got to visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus! It was cool outside (in the high 60's) so it was a great night for this to happen. Libby and I stopped on the way home and after about an hour we headed home to have dinner with Ryan.

Today is also a very special day...today is the 17th birthday of my wonderful and beautiful niece Elizabeth. Libby and I gave her a call and got to talk to her for about 20 minutes. She seemed to have had a pretty good birthday which makes me very happy. I just hate living so far away from her. I wish I lived closer so that we got to hang out more, so that I could attend the performances of both of my very talented nieces, and get to spend special times like today together!