Busy, Busy, Busy!

First of all, I want to wish a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my cuzzy cuz TIFFANY! I wish she was here in Tally with us celebrating but she couldn’t make it so I’m giving her some love on the ol’ blog. Love you Tiff, happy birthday!!


(Picture stolen from Tiff's FB)

Onto Christmas recap:

I hope Santa was good to you, he was very good to me!

Thursday (Christmas Eve) was my Mom’s birthday. We celebrated by going to eat at El Jalisco’s!



Yes, I'm mature.

Then we went to my Grandma’s for cake (cookies this year) and presents. Mom got some good stuff!

My Uncle Doug and Aunt Angie gave each of the women a scarf that they bought on their trip to Italy this past November. I am in LOVE with mine!

After bday celebrations we (Me, David, Mom, Dad, Cole & Valerie) piled up in our car and rode through a few neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights. Loved it although the lights get less and less every year :(

Then it was home to watch the first showing (followed by many more) of a Christmas story and get ready for bed.

We stayed at my parents and will be there all this week so we don’t miss out on any of the fun! I got tons of good stuff, including my Cricut! I am planning to buy the software this evening so I can finally get to making the projects I’ve been dying to make :) Thanks Hubs and Mom & Dad for spoiling me :)

Remi opening his bone! He loved ripping the paper off!

Dad & his scratch offs!

Mom & Cole

Our 9th Christmas together.


David's new glove!

Matching jammies

Momma's pretty mantle

Yayyyyyy!!!

Christmas was spent with family and we of course did a lot of eating. It was back to GMa’s for Christmas dinner.

We also went to my In-Laws for a little while to do Christmas with them and had our “first” dinner of the day. Thank you guys!! One person who was extremely missed this Christmas vacation was my S-I-L Kimbo :/ Her and her hubby couldn’t make it up this year and I was SO sad to not see her on Christmas. Hopefully next year, right Kim?! Last stop of the day was Aunt Sandra’s where we opened more gifts (Thank you guys!) and then headed home on the drizzly Christmas night.

At GMa's

Oh and I also got to spend some time playing with my homemade Bokeh lens/hood thingy. Love the results!


Sunday was spent doing laundry and my friends The Shampaners paid us a visit at mine and David’s house. It was great catching up with them!

Let’s see, OH! We had snow flurries on Sunday!! It was sooo cold and blistery and wouldn’t ya know, while I was at Kohl’s using my gift card to buy this beauty in taupe, I saw snow flurries! It was soo cool, and I could see them so good on my black sweatshirt. I know it’s not a big deal for most people but here in Florida I was super duper excited! Then last night our company started to arrive. Everyone usually gets here after Christmas and stays through or close to New Years. Last night we got a “batch” of family which included Uncle Donny, his girlfriend Debbie, her daughter Kendall, and Big Momma & Grampy! Within the first hour that she was there, we cooked the first of (6!) boxes of Ghirardelli brownies she brought. God love her! This is how you know Big Momma is in the house:

Grammy & Grampy



And would you please take special notice of the amount of paper plates the woman brought? She came prepared! Haha!

Today I was the only one who had to work out of all 10 people at the house this morning. Boo! But thankfully I am off Wednesday, Thursday and of course Friday so I’ll get some family time in. Can’t wait!

Oh and here's us tonight hanging out trying to stay warm!





Here’s to a great week!!

Thoughts for Wednesday

-Christmas is in just three short days

-There is no good reason to be at work this week. Or next.

-Can’t wait to see some of my favorite people ever this weekend

-Dr. took 3 skin biopsies yesterday…fingers crossed they come back benign

-Momma turns 29 again on the 24th ;)

-I hope we get sent home early tomorrow…wishful thinking!

-I’m picking up the bed rails today for our guest room (yay!)

-I really want to make this yummy corn chowder recipe sometime over the holiday weekend

-I need to purchase a “game gift” – my family’s annual white elephant of sorts

-I plan to take a heckofalotta pictures this weekend. I want to try this technique with the Christmas tree like this gal at Kevinandamanda.com

Did I mention I don’t want to work tomorrow?!


Now you go on and have yourself a Merry little Christmas=D

Eat, Drink & Be Merry!

This has probably become the most fitting quote for this holiday season, and this weekend was no exception!

Saturday we hosted a Christmas party at our home. I have to say I was super nervous and anxious all week. Will people get bored? Will there be enough food? Is the house big enough? Where will they park?

Thankfully, it went off without a hitch! At one point we had about 40 bodies and it was packed and so fun! There was tons of food & I really enjoyed having everyone over. I never peeked outside at the parking, and we never got a complaint, so I’m guessing it all worked out!


Us girls doing our ornament exchange:)
Renee, Katie, Me & Erin

People mingled and ate and drank and were merry (as far as I could tell;). It was good seeing and getting to hang out with people I hadn’t gotten to see in a while. David and I were saying that it felt sort of like our wedding, trying to be sure to talk to everyone and not have a guest that was feeling left out or bored.

We bought a fire pit for the backyard and I think that was a great decision. It got pretty darn cold and since people were hanging outside as well, it was a great addition!

Our last guests left around 11:30 ish and by then we were absolutely pooped! We’d been up since six cleaning and prepping.

My Mom, Dad, Cole & Valerie crashed at our house. There was someone in almost every room! Cole on the couch, Val on a blowup bed in my craft room & M & D in the guest room (sleeping on the mattress on the floor since the bed is still a “look don’t touch” item!)

Remi did really well with all the people. He made his rounds and managed to get snuck a few food items (Valerie!! ;) In the middle of the night he left our room and went and snuggled up with Cole on the couch…so cute! Even though Cole probably didn’t care for it much haha!
I have to give a BIG THANKS & *HUGS* to my Mom & Dad. They came over early on party day to help in anything we needed them to do. My Dad’s main job was to cook the chili, and Mom helped me with inside stuff. I love you both, y’all rock!!
Dad & Brody And thanks again to my Hubby for completing your honey-do list. I love you:)

Thanks again to everyone for coming out! To those that couldn’t make it, we missed you!!

And now for some pictures…

Wii action!

Lindsay trying out the mystery pepper...haha!! Turns out she liked it!


Val & Cole had some company:)

Linds, Me & Nicole
Linds & Brody
Friends:)
Hubby tending to the fire
My great grandparents.
Me, Renee, Linds & Erin

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”



Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours!

It's Wednesday Folks

Just some random ramblings...

Firstly, every room in our house is finished except the guest room. It's been painted, but there is nothing in it. We've been meaning to buy furniture but kept putting it off. Well we are having a Christmas get together this weekend and decided the room needed to at least have a bed in it so it's not just empty and unfinished! So this presented a little problem because we wouldn't have time to order anything and it be here in time. The new hunt became to find a bed that was "take it home today!". As luck would have it, Ashley's Furniture (where the rest of our stuff is from) had one random bed for sale, on clearance and ready for take home. And I actually liked it! Sold! We bought the bed but the rails had to be ordered. They were nice enough to send us home with loaner rails so the bed could at least be functional until the other ones came in. Well...I waited all day today so excited to put it together, and I realize the rails they gave me don't fit the slats on the bed...at all. Grr. I called and they don't have any loaner ones that would fit it, so I now have a headboard and a footboard but no complete "bed". Fingers crossed it comes in by Saturday!

Also last night we went to BB&B and both Targets to find bedding, nightstand & lamp. I am super excited with what we got and I'll share once I can show a completed room pic!

Nextly, (is that a word? I don't think so) I was excited to find that my sunburst mirror was featured on my friend Mandy's website mandipidy.com!

I used to work with her when we were receptionists at our old job and she is the sweetest person ever! She is also uber crafty and has an awesome website and even an etsy shop! You may remember, the silhouette I did of Remi was her tutorial (which I can't find on my blog now!). Thanks Mandy! =D

Lastly, here in the south, college football is big. Like real big. So when I/we see a Seminole in person, I gotta admit David and I get a little starstruck...guilty! What d'ya know, two times within the past few weeks we've seen FSU's head coach and starting quarter back Christian Ponder...both at Chick-Fil-A at different times. Actually, tonight I saw Coach Fischer and David wasn't with me. He was sad he wasn't there! I took a stalker picture of him...haha!
And here's David and Christian. "His Idol!" and ahh I don't mind the eye candy either;)

They went to Disney...again?!

Friday afternoon at 2:00 the car was loaded and in tow was me, Mom, David & Cole. Destination? Disney!
A friend of my Dad’s gave us two vouchers for a 1 day park hopper and since David and I have annual passes, we gave them to my Mom and brother. This was the quickest Disney trip we’ve ever had but it was still a lot of fun!

We arrived Friday early evening at our hotel, Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort.


From then on the pace picked up and we didn’t slow down until about midnight on Saturday. After checking in we went and dumped our stuff, then hopped on the bus to Magic Kingdom to turn in the vouchers. Luckily that went smoothly- I was worried about them taking the tickets because they weren’t in our name and said non-transferable, but they worked just fine and we were off to our next stop. We couldn’t actually go into the park because Cole & Mom’s tickets were only valid for the one day. So then we took the monorail to the Grand Floridian Resort to check out the famous gingerbread house that’s been featured many a times on the Food Network.


It was neat, but not as impressive as we were expecting.

Moving on, we caught the bus from Grand Floridian to Downtown Disney. The bus took for-evvver. We even had to call the front desk multiple times until they finally sent a bus our way. We’ve never waited that long before. At this point we’ve been here a few hours and all Cole has seen is a gingerbread house and Disney transportation. Not off to a good start!

We finally got to DD and started to have a little fun. First stop was eating at my all time favorite, Earl of Sandwich. Yum-O!

Then we walked around the shops some, bought two new Christmas ornaments, and Cole got some ice cream from the delicious Ghirardelli shop.



We headed back to the hotel because we knew we were going to have a very busy day ahead of us. A little rock paper scissor action took care of shower order, and then we crashed.

6:00 came very early the next morning, but I was prepared with my giant chocolate chip muffin bought at Earl!

We had a plan and had to stick to it to make the most of our ONE day. By 7:10 we were at the bus stop and on our way to Hollywood Studios. We had to go there first to ride Toy Story Mania. We were there when they opened and literally RAN along with thousands of other people to the ride and wouldn’t ya know we were on the FIRST car?! You see, this ride quickly goes from no wait to 120 minute wait and with a tight schedule like ours sometimes you just gotta run. It was fun, except I came in third place. Boo!


I love the way this Hollywood pic turned out...

Then Mom, Cole and I rode Rockin’ Roller Coaster. It was fun and there’s nothing like a roller coaster at 8 o’clock in the morning!

We knew we’d be back at this park again because we wanted to see the Osborn Family Spectacle of Lights, so we got these two big attractions out of the way and we were off to the next park.

Next stop, Magic Kingdom. The crowds at this point were next to non-existent because it was gloomy, cold and early and that combo equals not a lot of early birds in the parks! We walked right onto the few rides we wanted, and took a few pictures, before heading to the next park. We would also be returning to the MK later that night for fireworks and they were staying open until 1 so we knew we’d have all night to do more attractions.
The Christmas decorations were beautiful!

We hopped on over to Animal Kingdom next.

The weather was gorgeous at this point!

We weren’t going to have a lot of time here, but we wanted to be sure Cole got to at least see it because this was his first trip to Disney since we were very little, and AK is my second favorite park so I wanted him to experience it. We ate lunch at our usual Pizzafari and then took a quick two week trip through the African Safari.

We didn’t do nearly everything here that we wanted, but that’s what happens when you have 4 parks to do in one day!

Once again, we hopped on a bus and headed on over to Epcot. We (Me & Cole) rode Mission Space and then we all hit up the single rider line for Test Track since the wait was so long. Then we moaned and groaned but stood in line for 65 minutes to do Soarin’. We left Epcot around 5:30 and headed back to Hollywood Studios.
Love this pic too!

The light show was amazing – I could watch that every night!
It even "snowed"!

Then we went and did a drawing session at the neat animation studio we found on our Summer trip. These pictures should speak for themselves about who has the most talent. HAHA!!

Top left – David; Top Right-Tam; Bottom Left-Mom; Bottom Right-Cole

Mom’s looks like Minnie needs to go on a diet! Bahah!!

We said goodbye to Hollywood Studios and headed towards our final destination, back to Magic Kingdom. We first grabbed some dinner and I had my delicious taco salad. Then we got some delicious ice cream from our favorite ice cream shack. Then we grabbed a spot to watch the Wishes Fireworks show. It never gets old…The castle was in full on Christmas decoration and was dripping with tons and tons of white lights. So pretty!


After the show was over, we went and did the last few rides we hadn’t gotten to do in the morning. We were hoping to make it til 1, but during our 11:30 It’s a Small World ride, I slept and woke up as we were docking. Haha! It was time to go, we were exhausted, and not to mention freezing!

A bus ride and a hot shower later we were all horizontal and snoozing like babies.

A great, fast, whirlwind of a trip!

Can’t wait til next time:)