Christmas Vacation

We've had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I pray each of you have too. I'm only sad that it's coming to an end. I can't believe it went by so fast, but I've enjoyed having the time off with my 3 guys.

Christmas was a lot of fun for both boys. Their 'biggie' this year from Santa was an iPod iTouch. They love them and have played games and listened to music and videos each day since. Lance and I gave them a telescope from us. They've enjoyed that too. It was almost a full week after Christmas before we had clear skies we could look at, but it was really cool when we finally had a clear shot of the moon last night. Of course there were lots of other gifts too - nerf guns (I think we own one of every gun nerf makes now!), sketch pads, books, star wars action figures, a batman cape, x-box games, a Peyton Manning fathead for the boys bedroom (which I must say is very cool) and believe it or not I could keep going and going. They got so many cool things. Between Santa, Mom and Dad, grandparents and all our other family, my boys were no doubt completely spoiled. We tried more this year than we have in the past to really focus on the reason for this season. I hope all the presents didn't interfere with that lesson.

And since we didn't have quite enough toys in our house, we celebrated Owen's birthday today at Pump It Up. You may remember his birthday is on Christmas day, but we had his party today. Lance and I gave him a Nintendo DS, which he loves (maybe even more than his iTouch). He received several games and plenty of other toys too. Mainly though, I think he just enjoyed jumping and playing with all his friends and cousins at the party. We had a really cool SpongeBob cake made (I promise I'll post pictures soon) and Owen was very proud of his cake. It was almost completely gone when we left, which is exactly how we wanted it to be. I didn't want to bring any home.

Aside from all the present opening and toy playing, we've managed to make some progress in cleaning out closets and making room for our Baby Girl. There is still more work to be done, but we've made a good start. Lance also enjoyed an overnight trip with my Dad to South Georgia to camp and bring back a load of firewood. He's been outside off and on since then splitting a few logs here and there. He brought back a trailer full of oak, definately enough to last us a while. And we've enjoyed sleeping late, eating big breakfasts and hanging out at home relaxing together. It doesn't get much better than that.

I'm not really looking forward to returning to work on Monday and I know the boys are looking forward to going back to school on Tuesday. But ready or not, I'm afraid it's coming our way.