Christmas 2010

Our holiday celebrations started with our family Christmas on Thursday night before Christmas. Paige finished finals earlier in the week and headed home for her month-long winter break. It will be great to have her home, and we'll hopefully be seeing her quite a bit before she heads back to Kansas City in a few weeks.

After dinner and gifts, we were able to take a family photo; actually we took several family photos (thank you to Gail for coming over and playing photographer, so I didn't have to try to put the camera on a barstool and use the timer, as in previous years), and Dave was cracking us up in most of them! I did manage to find one where we were all smiling and fairly serious, and had it developed in sepia tones for our New Year's photo card.

But this one below, with all of us cutting up, was one of my favorites:



Jace's favorite gift was an iPod Touch - we surprised him with Dave's old iPhone, converted to an iPod. He promptly downloaded a few of his favorite songs, several games and screen savers, etc. and has been playing it non-stop for the past week. It is hard to know what to buy Neil and Paige, but Dave did it this year, with GPS units for both of them.

On Christmas eve we went to the candlelight service at church, and then said goodbye to Dave and Neil on Christmas Day when they left for Florida to spend a few days with Dave's parents. Jace and I headed to St. Clair last night for a weekend celebration with my family... more soon, with some great pictures. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A moment on the lips, forever on the... well, you know.

My sis Tara sent me a text earlier this week "No DQ peppermint chip blizzard this year. So sad!" That's her holiday weakness, we talked about it last year. Thankfully (or NOT) they still have mine, out there everywhere, calling my name:



I don't know WHY I like these Candy Cane Hershey Kisses so much - I think part of it is the texture... as I'm eating the fourth, fifth, six one of the day, I just CANNOT get enough of the creamy white chocolate and those little peppermint chips mixed together in one perfect little bite! Now, if I just had any stinkin' willpower, I'd be ok. But I've bought more than one bag so far this holiday season... ok, more than even two bags. I'm not telling how many I've bought. I finished a bag last week and now I haven't had ANY this whole week. Progress! It is a good thing they're only a seasonal thing, I guess.

In other (related - ha!!) news, I'm back to the gym, at least in much more of a routine way than I have been the last couple of months. I tried my first step aerobics class this week. That always sounds like such a lame cliche to me, I've never really wanted to try it. But I can't get out of work in time to hit my cycling class I was doing, and this one doesn't start until 7:00 M-W. So, despite my two left feet, I tried it and liked it. A great workout, and hopefully in time I won't be fumbling around in the back of the room (if you position self directly in line with the instructor, then you can't see yourself bumbling around in the mirror!)

Off to the grocery store this morning and then cycling class at 10AM. Hope everyone is further along on Christmas shopping than me - if not, we're all in trouble!