.: Christmas - Check. New Years

Huh? What? Is it over? What just happened?

The entire weekend was spent shopping, baking, cleaning and wrapping. It was a whirlwind for sure. And don't ask me why I felt that NOW was the time to also tackle the laundry pile. Throw 8 loads of laundry into the mix why don't ya? But with Erick's help, very little sleep, 5 tons of coffee and not an ounce of rest for the weary, we managed to get everything done this Christmas season that we wanted to.

60 Christmas cards sent
2 trips to Disneyland
2 trips to Camp Snoopy
2 nights of Christmas light-looking
2 date night/Christmas shopping adventures
1 visit to Santa Claus
1 preschool recital
1 dance recital
1 cookie baking day
Christmas Eve dinner at my sisters
Christmas morning breakfast with just us
Christmas dinner at the inlaws
Erick was able to get time off to attend ALL of the events
1 successful Santa photo, 2 successful family photos and hundreds of scrappable photos
And one little girl praying to accept Jesus into her heart

It was the best Christmas season I could hope for.

Here are the pictures from the weekend.

I got the sweetest surprise this morning. I opened my stocking and amidst all the yummy treats was $175 in gift cards to Best Buy from the designers at DST!! Can you believe that?!? I had no idea they were planning all this and I am really difficult to surprise. I was shocked! Isn't that so incredibly sweet? Such a kind and generous thing for them to do. I have never had that kind of money to spend at Best Buy all on myself before. I'm thinking I'll probably get more memory for my laptop. It runs great but when I open PSCS2, I can't really have anything else open (email, internet) and I would love to improve that. I'm a multi-tasker so when I scrap, I hate that I can't have my email open at least. Most of the time, I don't get to scrap because I know I have to shut everything else off just to open PSCS2 and I can never allow myself to be that shut away from the work of DST. So really, more memory would probably make it so much easier for me to scrap and work at the same time. If not memory then maybe an external hard drive? Oh it's so fun getting to shop tech stuff for a change!! Yay! Thank you again to all of the wonderful designers who did such a nice thing for me.

And now it's on to New Years. We'll be making Bratwurst and Sauerkraut (Germans believe it brings good luck if you eat pork and sauerkraut on New Years Eve) and Erick and I always share a bottle of Pieroth Blue (purchased as a gift from my Dad & Cheryl at our first wine tasting). McKenna and I have a couple of fun art projects that we'll work on as well as baking some New Years cupcakes. I considered letting her stay up until midnight that night but you know, she's only 3. I'm afraid that so little sleep will not be good for her. 10pm is really the latest she can handle before it starts to affect her physically. So maybe we'll do a New Years Eve party with her with a "late" bedtime (I'm thinkin' like 9pm? LOL!) and then possibly next year I'll let her stay up.

And now I'm off to sleep. I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas as well!