Teachers Have It Easy: December 2010

I will post some Christmas photos soon. Posting them now would require me to get up from this chair, and I'm really, really comfortable.

All in all, we had a very good Christmas season. Amelia was more aware of everything this year, so that made it much more fun. However, the big bummer was that Darryl was gone for most of the month because he was working in various places out of town and out of country; the week before Christmas I was actually starting to worry that he might not make it home in time for Christmas because he was stuck in snowy London. He was supposed to fly out on the Sunday before Christmas, but instead was delayed until Wednesday...and that plan was a little dicey at best. Everything worked out, though, and he made it home Wednesday evening, and Amelia and I were SO glad to have him home.

I have to give a big shout-out to my mom, who pretty much dropped everything to stay with me the last week of school so she could just help out. That week is typically hectic, but because she was here, I was able to concentrate on stuff that needed to get done for school (making out three exams=not fun), and she took care of Amelia. I was very glad to have her here!

On to Christmas activities...
Christmas Eve afternoon, we had my cousin Vicky and her husband, Robert, over for dessert. We had peanut butter cake (delicious!) and opened presents. After they left, we went to a Christmas Eve service at Buckhead Church. The service opened with this:

After the service, we ate at Carabba's and then came home to get ready for Santa. We left out reindeer food, and then Amelia picked two of the cookies she had "decorated" to leave for Santa. I think he enjoyed them!

It was just the three of us for Christmas morning, and that was nice because it hasn't really been "just the three of us" much at all lately. Amelia loved her new toys, especially the dollhouse Santa left her. (Seriously, she played with it ALL day...so maybe it was a present for Darryl and me as well, haha.) I also made this recipe for Christmas breakfast along with sausage balls. Let me tell you, that coffee cake is GOOD, but the baking time is NOT correct; as a result, we were all starving by the time it was done.

Not long after breakfast, we had a white Christmas!! It was such a nice day...warm and cozy inside while the snow fell gently outside. However, Darryl thought that if we didn't go ahead and leave for Florida (we were originally going to go the day after Christmas), we would be stuck here and wouldn't get to go at all. (I think the London experience has scarred Darryl for life.) So after lunch (also delicious...Honeybaked Ham, sweet potato casserole, and roasted asparagus), we scrambled around and packed up everything and headed out for Florida around 4:00.

It was snowing so heavily around Columbus--and by then it was dark--that we came "this close" to getting a hotel for the evening, but it eventually lightened up and we were fine. We got to Florida around 11:30 and were so ready for bed.

The next morning, we did Christmas with my parents and hung around the house most of the day. We went over to Darryl's sister's house at one point for a while and then opened gifts there, too. That night, my mom fixed a big dinner, and everything was delicious. (Apparently I cannot come up with a different adjective to describe good food.)

Fast forward to Monday afternoon...Darryl and I went out for the afternoon. We hadn't had a date in I don't know when. We shopped around some and took advantage of some after-Christmas sales. Then we spontaneously decided to see the movie Life as We Know It at the dollar theater (cute movie but very predictable...as we expected), and then we had seafood for dinner...yum. (Wow...I branched out with a different adjective.) Then we picked up Amelia from my parents' house and went to Darryl's sister's house, where we enjoyed a family tournament of "Just Dance 2" for the Wii. I chose to be a spectator because several people had their Flip video cameras out, and I for one did not want to see my dance video posted to Facebook.

And Tuesday, yesterday, we came back home. While I really enjoyed being with our family, we all know there is no place like home. Amelia and I are enjoying an easygoing morning in our pjs, but we're meeting my cousin for lunch soon...so we better get going.

I'll have some photos soon!

P.S. Two days later, I realized I didn't link to the recipe I made Christmas morning. I've added it now. :-)

This year, our friends Damian and Rebecca from Baton Rouge came to visit us for Thanksgiving. We had celebrated Thanksgiving together for several years before we had Amelia, but this was our first time to get together for this holiday in four years! The holiday is best explained by the photos below: