Month: December 2005

Another Christmas has come and gone. It’s hard to believe that this year is almost over.

This Christmas was a great one. We spent all of Christmas Eve with Derek’s family. We opened presents in the morning, watched football and a few movies (one of the movies, Saint Ralph, was SO good! I highly recommend it.) We ate our yearly Chinese dinner, complete with won tons, soy sauce chicken, and pepper steak. It was a great day.

This is Logan, Derek’s aunt Kathy, and Pawpaw. In classic baby style, Logan was way more interested in the ribbon and the paper than in the actual presents.

We spent Christmas day with my family. After opening presents, we headed over to Cindi’s house for brunch. Derek, the boys and I have never gotten to go to Christmas brunch. Normally we split Christmas day between our two families, but this year each family got a full day. It was so much easier and much less stressful. We were able to relax and enjoy both days much more. Anyway, after brunch we headed back to my parents house to play with our new toys and ended the day with a delicious prime rib dinner.

Looks like Santa made it to our house!

Logan the Christmas paper monster.

And how is this for Christmas spirit? My sister and I made these sweatshirts many, many moons ago. My mom still wears them…she is a teacher after all. If these don’t scream teacher sweatshirt then I don’t know what does. Love you mom! Even though you still wear these.

Now that Christmas is over, let the shopping begin! I got an Ikea giftcard, and lots of moolah. It’s going to be a fun week!

We have a tradition in my family that started 14 years ago. Sometime before Chrismtas, Santa comes to visit us at our house. It’s a big thing with lots of extended family. We eat sandwiches, visit, and all take a turn sitting on Santa’s lap. It is one of my most favorite Christmas traditions. This year we took it up at notch at my sister-in-laws request. She wanted to sing Christmas carols. We aren’t exactly a singing family, but it was so fun singing carols. It really feels like Christmas now.

While looking for some pictures for what I am going to write next, I found this one of me with Santa in 1991, which I believe was the first year he came.

And here’s the boys with Santa this year. I also had my turn on his lap, but I didn’t like any of the pictures of me so you just get the boys. Someday I am sure I will have to grow up and not sit on Santa’s lap, but I assure you this year, I was still a kid at heart.

So that leads me to my most memorable Christmas presents ever. I wanted to have pictures for every one of these, but my mom has failed me with her picture taking. She obviously isn’t a scrapbooker! Here are my top 5 most memorable Christmas presents, in chronological order.

1. Pogo ball, circa 1987. I wish I still had mine. I love that thing!

2. Double Dare board game, circa 1988. Oh, how I loved Double Dare! To me, this game was almost like being on the real gameshow. Minus the slime.

3. Brown leather bomber jacket, circa 1992. I was in 7th grade and this was the must have fashion item of the year. All Christmas morning I thought I did not get it and there was no hiding my disapppointment. But my sneaky “Santas” had hid it in the backyard, along with my little brother’s new bike.

4. Digital camera, circa 2003. I had one on my list for 2 years before I finally got one. Oh happy day! It really took my picture taking and scrapping up a notch.

5. Laptop computer with wireless, circa 2004. I put a laptop on my Christmas list as a joke. I wanted one, but I knew it was completely out of our Christmas budget. My sweet, sneaky husband found one for me. One of his lab partners was selling his old one and Derek bought it from him. I was utterly shocked when I opened it. I literally thought that it was just a joke. I love my computer!

Only 2 more sleeps til Christmas!

What a weekend! It started out on Friday night with Derek getting in from Houston. It feels like the old days when he was in college and I was in high school and he would come home to visit for the weekends. Saturday we were busy spending time with our families, getting ready for Connor’s party, Christmas shopping, and going out for our anniversary.

Today is our six year anniversary. Six years and we are beginning a new chapter of our life together. I am so excited about our adventures to come and the adventures we have already shared. I can’t imagine sharing my life with anyone else. We laugh, we play, we have fun, we talk, and we are best friends. I am so blessed.

Today was Connor’s birthday party. I can’t believe my baby is already three (well, almost anyway). In some ways it seems like a different lifetime when he was born, but in other ways it feels like it was just yesterday. My sweet boy is turning more and more into a normal little person everyday. We had a great birthday party for him today, complete with a firetruck cake, hot dogs, games, presents, friends, and family.

And finally, I present to you…

Waiting for Christmas….roomate style. I wanted to dedicate an entire blog to this, but I just couldn’t wait.

My college roomate Shauna and I thought we were so funny today. We are roomates forever in our hearts.

One week til Chrismas! Let the countdown begin!

Our soon-to-be new home. Don’t mind the furniture in there (although I really like most of it). The old owners haven’t completely moved out yet. I am so pumped about our new house!

Today while the boys were napping, I took advantage of my little brother being home and headed out for a little Christmas shopping at Super Target. I took this little back way and suddenly had a memory of something I had not thought about for a long, long time. About 9 years ago, the Super Target here was a Venture (anyone remember that store?) and it just had a small parking lot in the front. At the back it was just sort of woodsy. One night, my good friend Sarah had this idea that I should take Derek on a picnic at night behind Venture. She set it all up for us and I surprised him with a little candlelit picnic. The place where we had our picnic is now a parking lot.

That memory led me to another memory of a little park nearby. We used to go there to kiss…okay, I admit it…Derek and I kiss…

Anyway, this one night we were there, just making out, and suddenly there are bright lights shining in the window. Turns out the park closed at dusk and it was a police officer. So the cop asks for some ID, and this is the bad part. I was only 15 and didn’t have any. So the officer takes Derek’s and see’s that he is 19…oh boy. That sure doesn’t look good. He then asks me to step out of the car. I can barely even move…I am totally freaking out, sure that we are about to be arrested for kissing in the park. The cop shines his big flashlight down on my just like they do to the real criminals. “You here by your own free will?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, you need to find somewhere else to go.”

“Yes sir”

That was it. At the time it was the hugest deal. I cried. I think it was a long, long time before I could bring myself to go back there. And you better believe that we were always gone by dark after that!

So then I had another memory. New Year’s Eve of 1995. We were having a movie watching fest at my house. We were watching the Fox and the Hound when Derek said the three little words that he has said every day since. “Megan…I love you.” I love you, too.

I miss my sweet husband! I can’t wait to see you on Friday!

We have a house! Praise the Lord! I couldn’t be any happier about it. We actually ended up not getting the deer house. After our offer, the sellers came back with a counter offer and for some reason Derek and I both got an uneasy feeling about it. It was still a great house in a great neighborhood but something just didn’t feel right. So we called up Scarlet, our awesome realtor, and told her we wanted to keep looking just to make sure we had seen everything. There were three more subdivisions we hadn’t looked at. Wouldn’t you know, we found an even better house for us! It is awesome…4 bedrooms…all kinds of upgrades…big kitchen…on a cul-de-sac…one story…it just feels like home. We made an offer, then they made a counter offer which didn’t phase us a bit and it’s all in the works! We will close by January 9! I can’t wait.

Of course, I didn’t think to take a picture when we were looking at it because it was dark. But Derek is meeting the inspector there on Tuesday morning and he has promised me pictures.

The boys and I are back at my parents house and Derek stayed behind for his first day of work tomorrow. His first day of being a real grown up. Good luck, babe!

Oh man, it feels good to be home with family! We just did the Christmas lights outside and tonight we are finally getting the tree decorated. My mom was waiting for more people to get home. My little brother is here and I just know we are going to have so much fun. And after all the holiday fun, we will move into our home!! Good times ahead. Life it good!

Can I just say that I am totally feeling the love? I am getting comments from people a week after my last post…which means that people are coming here and checking my blog often! Thanks for keeping us in your prayers and for missing me!

So we made it to Texas! The past week feels like a blur. It was sad to leave our friends in California just like I knew it would be, but this adventure ahead of us is so exciting!

We are in Houston right now. I’m blogging from our hotel room. We almost got mooked with this room…note to my readers-do not book your hotel rooms through hotels.com! It has all worked out and we are kicking back in a really large 2 room suite. In fact, it is nearly the size of our apartment in Cali! Craziness. We got to Houston on Monday and yesterday we offically started the house hunt. And our house hunt may be over already! We found a house we love in an absolutely amazing neighborhood. We are making an offer on it!! If for some reason this one doesn’t work out, there are two more we found yesterday that we liked and there are also a few more neighborhoods we can check out. But, we really want the first one to work out. I call it the deer house because two deer ran across the road on our way out of the neighborhood. I thought maybe that was a sign. I think if we had for some reason hit the deer that would have been a bad sign…

So that’s a quick update! We are having a really great time. This is a little vacation for us…goodness knows we need it! More to come soon…for now Connor and I are going to walk to the Krispy Kreme next door and watch the donuts on the “train track” as Connor says. Happy hump day!