Christmas in Staunton

Saturday after Christmas I got up and packed my things to head to Staunton to spend some Christmas time with Scott's family. We had a wonderful day catching up with his mom, playing with Millie, and doing an all evening tour of Staunton. We started the day out with The Santaland Diaries at Blackfriars Theater. It was a monologue of a homosexual male who gets a holiday job working as one of Santas elves at Macy's in NYC. It was hilarious and amazing that someone can stand on stage for an hour and never break character. Then we went to a local theater in Downtown Staunton and saw The Blind Side....AMAZING movie! Next was dinner at an italian restaurant down the street. After dinner, we met up with Jim and Brandon, Scott's friends from Fort Defiance High School, to have a few drinks and catch up. Scott's good friend Courtney was home for the holidays, but wasn't able to come out since she and her fiance Mark were doing wedding planning until the late hours, sooooooo, at midnight when the bar closed we decided to go visit Courtney. I was so excited to meet her since I had heard so much about her. The next day we woke up, went to Church, had a wonderful lunch at his house, and watched some football before starting our journey back to the beach. The holidays this year were not traditional, and I missed being with the Blacksburg side of the family, but the days were relaxing and it was priceless to be with Callie on her first Christmas.

Christmas Day

Dad's Christmas Tie "Christmas without Callie, I don't think so."

Christmas day this year started with waking up to fix homemade cinnamon rolls, which were so worth the interrupted sleep, plus I was anxious to see what Santa brought me ;-) Mom made sausage and grits casseroles and we headed over to Matt and Amanda's. When we got there, Callie had already opened a few presents and Don and Donna (Amanda's parents) had arrived. The day was spent eating, watching movings, and opening presents in between Callies naps. I could post a million pictures of Callie unwrapping presents because that was by far her favorite part of her first Christmas. My personal favorites were my earrings from Matt and Amanda, the Glee CD, Snuggies and travel scrabble, Red Door Spa gift card from dad, my bracelet and pendant from Scott, some fabulous tops from mom, and shoe and laptop money once I decide what I want. It was a wonderfully relaxing day spent with the people I love most.

Christmas Eve

Callie wants to eat with the big people

This year Mom and Dad came to Virginia Beach to celebrate the holidays and Matt, Amanda, and Callie came over for dinner Christmas Eve. Mom and I made Ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, unleavened rolls (not intentionally, I killed the yeast), and a pear, blue cheese, and candied pecan salad. Mom also made yummy pies. We didn't eat them that night though because the rolls finally rose once they hit our stomachs and there was no room for deserts :-)

Tuesday Night 12-22

My parent got into town on Tuesday night to spend Christmas in Virginia Beach. It also happened to be Matt and Amanda's 9th wedding anniversary. They went out to celebrate while Mom and Dad babysat Callie. Scott and I met everyone over at Matt and Amanda's and we did presents that included Scott since he was leaving the next day to go home. Scott got Callie a soccer ball and a cell phone of her very own so she won't try and eat his while calling random people at the same time.......... It was a hit

And, we LOVE our new slankets :-)

"Christmas Eve" at Pa's

"Mommy, Daddy, who is this stranger?"

Riding Horsy

Christmas Eve has traditionally been spent at my grandfathers. This year, I was scheduled to work, but thankfully everyone was able to celebrate on Sunday night. It was a packed house with Mom, Dad, Matt, Amanda, Callie, Me, Scott, Katie, Luke, WJ, Lauren, Logan, Lynn, Walter, Pa, and my moms cousin. After some yummy food and football, Luke dressed up as Santa for Callie and Logan, and we opened presents. Pa's Christmas Eve is a tradition and I was so glad that Scott was able to be there to experience it and it's a belssing to have everyone together and to see Pa with his Great Grandchildren :-) We certainly missed the Missouri third of the family!

Christmas in Richmond

The weekend before Christmas was The Big Snow in Virginia. Scott and I had planned to go to Richmond that weekend since I wasn't going to be able to be home for the holidays to spend time with my parents and see their decorations. Luckily, my new car has four wheel drive and Scott, having gone to college in Indiana, has experience driving in the snow. After a 3 1/2 hour drive home going mostly a safe 25 mph, we spent the rest of the weekend on the couch watching movies, opening presents, eating yummy potato soup, and hopping in and out of the hot tub thanks to my dad who would clear a path and open the top for us :-) We also got a surprise visit from my mom's cousin who lives in Germany. She called Sunday morning and was stuck waiting for a flight out of the Richmond airport to go back home. The earliest they could get her home was Wednesday so we picked her up from the hotel to come stay until then.

Christmas in Disney

I know, I know. I am so very behind in Blogging. It's just that December was so jam packed with fun that I wanted to spend every moment enjoying it rather than blogging about it. So now it's time for updating....... December started out with a weekend trip to Florida. Scott had interviews in Gainesville and Jacksonville. Since he had to get a rental car, we decided to make a mini vacation of it and go to Disney in the middle. I can not even begin to tell you how much fun we had. LOTS!!!!!! We visited Downtown Disney, ate at planet hollywood, and spent all day Saturday in the parks. When I say all day, I mean from 9:00am when the parks opened to 1am the next day. In fact, Magic Kingdom closed at 1am, but we snuck into the last show at one of the theaters and technically we were there until 1:30 to closed the place down. It was indescribable to leave an empty park and be able to look down main street with NOONE blocking the perfect view of Cinderellas Castle. It's something that only the people of HGTV get to see and the handful of Disney troupers, an elite group in which Scott is now officially a member ;-)

Just to give you an idea of our day- we did all four parks in 16 hours. We rode (deep breath) expedition everest, animal kingdoms safari, spaceship earth, journey into imagination, test track, mission space, dinosaurs (with my eyes closed), winnie the pooh, mickey's philharmagic, snow white, buzz lightyear, jungle cruise, space mountain, peterpan, haunted mansion, big thunder mountain, splash mountain, pirates of the caribbean, tower of terror, rock 'n roller coaster, great movie ride, star tours, narnia, and the disney walking tour. 24 rides/shows in 16 hours. For anyone who has ever been to Disney, you know how amazing and almost impossible that is. It was a magical time and we hobbled out of the park with smiles on our faces.

Scotts interviews went well too! :-)