Highlights

Wow! The Christmas Holidays were exciting, fun, hectic, traveling, loving, funny, memorable and went by too fast. Now we are in the process of getting back into the swing of "normal" everyday life. So, here are some highlights of the holidays.

We started our Holiday adventure with a trip to Papaw Cook's house for a few days where we spent lots of time with family and friends. We visited Darren's uncles shooting preserve and I got the chance to try my luck at shooting sporting clays, needless to say I won't be entering any tournaments any time soon. And we got to go along on a Pheasant shoot, it was a lot of fun. We had a great Christmas there and spent lots of time "in the kitchen, laughing!" (The kitchen is the gathering place there, it always has been. It is nice, it brings a great sense of "togetherness." The kids really enjoyed thier time with Papaw and cousins, Austin, Kinzie, and Briella.

On Christmas Eve we went to the Cook Christmas then headed home. We made it back around 12:00 am. We got the kids to bed so Santa could come and work his magic. He brought Katy a Butterscotch Pony, Mason a Train set and table, and Adam an airplane. Santa usually brings each child one special thing, and stocking full of surprises. This excitement is later followed with 3 gifts from Mom and Dad (these 3 are representative of the gifts brought to Jesus by the Wise Men). That is our way of trying to keep it simple.

On Christmas morning the kids got up and were amazed at thier new found treasures from Santa. They loved everything. Then we opened our gifts for each other in our living room around our Christmas tree.

Then we were off to my sister's house for Christmas morning breakfast and Christmas with the Burch side of the family. We draw names there and everyone had a great time with each other and watching everyone open gifts. We open one at a time. We did catch gran sneaking a peak at one of her gifts before we started opening. We all got a good laugh out of that. After we opened gifts and spent some time together we headed back home for some rest, for the kids at least. Darren and I had to get busy putting things away, doing laundry and getting things ready for his mom, her husband and 3 teenagers who were scheduled to visit the next day. On top of all that Adam was pretty sick, Katy and Mason had also been sick and Mason still wasn't feeling well. That afternoon we were scheduled back at Mom and Dad's for Christmas dinner, Prime Rib, baked potatoes, salad...it was great. That is my favorite meal of Christmas. Most of our family was there plus some neighbors who classify as family.

The day after Christmas we had to take Adam to the Doctor and ended up meeting Darren's mom and family for lunch. Then we all headed back over the mountain to our house. We had a really good visit with them. The older kids got a chance to do some things they had never done before. They rode the ATV a lot and Dillon learning how to shoot a bow, he was pretty good. We had lots of good food and spent both nights playing games together. It was a great visit and one we look forward to each year.

By the weekend, Darren went hunting for the last time and the kids and I spent some time vegging out!

We had a good New Year's and got a little bit of snow to boot. The kids were out of school for 2 days, mostly for ice on roads, not so much the snow.

Now we are getting back into the swing of things!

I check in to a mental and physcal rehabilitation center on Monday!

Hahaha!!!! Just kidding. Christmas was GREAT!