all caught up!

I know I haven’t been the best at updating – but when I go back and read this in a few years (or a few months, whatev!) I just need to remember how much I have enjoyed this break!

Christopher is at such a great age right now. We play all day long, usually in our jammies, while Stephen is at work. I know – lazy, right?  I don’t mind.  :)  I know that this is only a 4-week break that I’m getting, and I will be crazy busy with school next semester, (I’m enrolled in 19 hours for the Spring semester) so the way I see it is that I deserve  little down-time before a time-consuming semester starts.

Anyway – I’m going to just put all of the last few weeks activities into one big blog and just get it out there and over with so that I can move on!

After I wrote this post out and added pictures to it, I realized that it could win an award for Longest Blog Ever. My apologies, but I’m not changing it now! Ha!

We spent Christmas Eve afternoon at my parent’s house, with my family – Mom, Dad, Tyler, & Britney.

 
I used to be able to spike Christopher’s hair – but now he messes it up and it ends up looking like this. I promise, this isn’t how I originally fixed it. :)

My dad reading about the birth of Christ.

Christopher and one of his favorite ladies – Aunt B.

Unfortunately for me, this vacuum isn’t real. He loves it!

Hiding out in Pawpaw’s new toolbox.

Kiddo loved his new shoes. (Can you see the smile on his face?)

I told him to go thank Pawpaw for his new shoes, and to give him a hug.
 
Granny, too!

Then, (just for the heck of it?) he gave Aunt B a hug, too!
 
 
LOVE my new Hogs hoodie from Ty and B! It’s super warm and comfy!

Aunt B and Uncle Tyler got Christopher this awesome 4-wheeler! He loves it!

Granny and Pawpaw with C-monster. (And another pair of shoes he got from them!)

We spent Christmas Eve evening with Stephen’s mom. We were supposed to do gifts with her and his brother/sister-in-law that night, but they were late getting in from DFW, so we ended up doing them the next day. We had dinner with Deanna and played card games after Christopher went to bed.

On Christmas morning, we woke up and realized that Santa Claus had come to visit Christopher! Apparently, he was a good boy this year!

We got a video of this, but I haven’t uploaded it to YouTube yet, so here are a few pictures of Christmas morning (at our house.)
 

Christmas morning, we went to my parents house. Santa still stops by my parents house to leave our stockings full of gifts. :) We got some neat stuff in our stockings there and had a yummy breakfast of homemade biscuits and gravy, sausage, bacon, and Paul Deen cinnamon rolls. (Which I got up at 6:30 in the morning to make but was SO totally worth it, cause they are so ridiculously delicious.)

Pawpaw and Uncle Tyler had put together this gift for Christopher.

After breakfast, we went to Nana’s house to do Christmas with her, Jim, and Cristin.  
This is Stephen opening his “big gift” – a new Blu-Ray player.

That would be yours truly, acting crazy. :)

We had a great Christmas! Mine and Stephen’s “big gifts” were Silver Dollar City season passes and gift cards to a couple of our favorite restaurants in Branson (Cantina Laredo and Shorty Smalls – YUM!) and we lots of other neat smaller gifts – too much to remember or mention!

We spent New Years Eve at the Rehearsal/Rehearsal Dinner for my brother’s wedding. Christopher stayed with his Nana that night, so Stephen and I rung in NYE by… (wait for it…) playing his new Mario Brothers game on the Wii.

We said Happy New Year to each other around 12:05 and were in bed by 12:15 (I’m just glad we made it til midnight!) then slept in till almost 10 am the next morning!

Saturday, January 1st, Tyler and Britney FINALLY became Mr. and Mrs. Speer!  I could not be happier about officially being able to call Britney my sister-in-law and I am so happy for them! Stephen was a groomsman and I was a bridesmaid.  It was a gorgeous wedding and reception and a great day all-around. :) I don’t have any pictures of it yet, so they’ll have to wait for another post.

This day after the wedding, Stephen and I got a phone call that we could finally go pick up Christopher’s last Christmas present…

 

We have a co-worker who breeds boxers. We had planned to breed Bella, our boxer, with their male boxer, Apollo, but the timing didn’t work out and I decided that I didn’t really want to have to deal with a litter of puppies while I was in college anyway.  But she told Stephen and few weeks before Christmas that she had a new litter and gave us a GREAT deal on a purebred, registered puppy that we just couldn’t refuse!  We went to look at them immediately. We knew we wanted a male, and  she had the prettiest little brindle-colored male – but another puppy with a gorgeous face walked right over to Christopher and started licking on him – and I knew immediately that he had picked us!  We brought him home Sunday afternoon and named him Jasper! He is going to be a GREAT dog, I just know! Christopher loves him already and so do we. :)

I think that pretty much covers all the big highlights over the last couple of weeks!