Christmas Review

I've essentially been away from my computer for about 4 days now, aside from occasionally checking email and updating my Twitter/Facebook status.  So, by now it's probably about time I get back to normal life and get this blog updated!

Our Christmas celebrations this year started the afternoon of Christmas Eve.  I went in to work that morning, since we get 8 hours of holiday pay to divide between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve.  Right after I was done with work Bill and I headed to Lima to celebrate Christmas with Bill's immediate and extended family.  The meal there was huge - prime rib, chicken, cheesy potatoes, corn casserole, green bean casserole, and more, plus a plethora of desserts!  It was, of course, followed by a gift exchange.  We celebrated this year at the hosue of good friends of the family, so part of the entertainment was watching their 4 long-haired dachshund dogs.  The most entertaining of the four were Lowla whose back legs are paralyzed so she runs around with a cart (and is quite good at it!) and Wilma, their new puppy who is around 10 weeks old I think.

The evening of Christmas Eve Bill and I returned to Findlay to attend our chuch's service.  Our church invited the members of our "mother church" (we're a church plant) to attend as well, so there were a lot more people there than usual!  But typically Christmas Eve has low attendance there because so many people travel, so it worked out well.  The service was awesome as usual, and we were nearly the last to leave the building after hanging out for a while afterward.

Christmas morning we were at home.  After somewhat sleeping in, I spent the moring making cheesecake for the family party that night while Bill continued to sleep.  We then opened a few presents, since our main gifts to each other were a new entertainment center for the living room and the Guitar Hero World Tour video game for the Wii which we're addicted to.

About mid afternoon we headed north to Dearborn to celebrate with my family there.  I spent some time visiting with my aunt and cousin, and then we all gathered for the family party - Bill and I, my parents, my grandma, and my brother and his wife and her mom who was visiting from Tennessee.  The spaghetti meal was delightful, particularly because I love my daddy's spaghetti!  The cheesecake I made turned out really good too, and it's great to have another good (and fairly easy) dessert that my corn-allergic brother can eat.  We had a big gift exchange there with a lot more gifts than usual since my grandma really went all out on her shopping this year, and it was pretty fun.

After all that, we rested on Friday!  We did do a little after Christmas shopping and found some more outdoor lights to use next year, and Bill helped me take care of some brainless work stuff that I needed to do at home.  Friday was a "bonus" holiday from work for me, so I'll get some overtime pay for the few hours we worked on that stuff.  We also did some general house cleaning, played some more Guitar Hero of course, and that's pretty much it.

Saturday was Bill's birthday, and we headed to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to celebrate his birthday and have Christmas with my grandparents.  My parents were supposed to meet us there, but unfortunately Mom got sick the night before and couldn't keep food down so she stayed home and just Daddy came.  We had a relaxing afternoon playing some card games with them, and then went to Bill's favorite restaurant for dinner - Triangle Park.  He even got a birthday cake there!  We each had a piece and then brought the rest home since we were very full.

Last night we drove home and my dad came to Findlay with us as well.  This morning he and I went to hear one of my seminary friends preach his first sermon, since our regular church was just having a brunch today (which Bill went to) to give all the worship teams a break.  After a lunch at Cafe Marie, Bill and my dad got to work on various projects at our house.  The goal for today is to get better caulking and weather stripping on a number of our windows that leak air in like crazy, plus to do the quarter round along the perimeter of our new floor.  So far I think they're making good progress on that.

And I think that brings you all up to date on my life of the last few days!  It's been a relatively busy yet very fun Christmas.