So, when I returned from my business trip late late Thursday night, early early Friday morning (12/21), my life has been a nonstop flurry of Christmas activity. I had to catch up on all that time when I wasn't home to celebrate the season.
It started on Friday with some shopping downtown with Kev. We got ourselves cool new phones, called the Mogul by HTC, and eagerly retired our ancient relics. Boy, have we had fun playing with these new toys! We also bought Jordyn an updated cell phone for Christmas, the Rumor by LG (apparently LG stand for Life's Good, and truly it is) and she has been texting NONSTOP!
While we were waiting for our phones to be activated, we had an hour and a half to kill, so we walked around downtown. Now if I can digress for a minute...a year or so ago, when a tacky Wireless Toyz appeared on the corner of our quaint downtown and un-quainted it a bit, a few friends and I were not pleased. But, when it came time to buy our new phones, we went to the tacky Wireless Toyz store and during our hour of down time, we spent it in our oh so quaint downtown. We dined at Victoria's, we went across the street to the OWB for some vino and chocolates, we went to the Embroidery shop for some school spirit wear (more Christmas shopping). Long story short, I have a new found fondness for the tacky local Wireless Toyz. If it had us walking around downtown and patronizing the local shops, imagine how many other people on which it has had the same effect.
But back to the Christmas flurry...Friday late afternoon took Kev, Jordyn & I to Nee Nee's daycare Christmas party. The kids exchanged presents. The parents imbibed in some cocktails. And then the kids put on the cutest gosh darn concert that I have ever seen. Maybe it's because they only sang 3 songs. Maybe it's because of those Santa Hats. Maybe it's because they had made their own microphones out of wads of tin foil. Or maybe it was the wine. All I know that it was absolutely adorable. That, and, American Idol is SO in Liam's future. Either that or Backstreet Boys (Justin Timberlake style, not Lance Bass).
Friday evening took me to the Glenmoor Gals' annual ornament exchange. Mindy hosted this year and it was so much fun!! I forgot to wear pants (not really, but that's how the story has come to be known!) Renee was my driver (since she and I are no longer technically residents), which means I got really sauced. I think I told Mindy 700 times that "I loooooove me some Mindy!" (which I do, of course but she and Larry probably think I'm completely nuts!) The appetizers were delicious. I brought the super easy to make that everybody loves white chocolate popcorn (that I also refer to as CRACK), and it was devoured...as were Patty's legendary bacon wrapped water chestnuts (click here for the recipe).
Saturday started at Big Boy with me, Kev, & the boys for breakfast. During which we got a call from Kev's mom that his cousin Shannon's husband (who is a pretty young guy - not even 30) had died in his sleep the previous morning. This made us oh so sad. My heart just broke for Shannon. We had just been to their wedding not even two years back and they had recently started talking about trying to get pregnant. As Kev and I were talking about this tragedy, Liam was asking us how you die in your sleep. I told him that sometimes a person's body just stops working. To which Liam replied, maybe his dream killed him. Now, if you recall the bedtime prayer I posted recently where Liam asked God not to bring him any dreams at all, this is a big fear of his. He hates having dreams. He doesn't want sweet dreams. He wants no dreams at all. So, by his 6 year old logic, dreams killed Shannon's husband in his sleep. I assured him this wasn't the case (we're still not certain what the cause was).
With this thought heavy on our hearts, we spent the day with more Christmas prep. Shopping, wrapping, readying the house for Christmas eve, and then dinner and a basketball game with Kev's brother Brian and his wife Tara. We went to Kruse & Muer on the Lake (it's actually across the busy street from the lake) but the food is always yummy, and then we were off to the Palace where we watched the Michigan State vs Texas basketball game. It was a lot of fun. When we got the Palace Kev said, watch us run into Ginny (insert last name here), a former co-worker of ours when we worked at Delphi. She's a huge MSU fan and alumnus. As we were leaving the game, who should we run into? GINNY! All decked out in her green and white MSU santa hat and all. Fun! Here are Tara and Brian making their debut on my blog (that they were oh so impressed that I have)
Sunday was more Christmas prep (and laundry), I had to get the house ready for Christmas Eve to be held at our house on Monday. Bailey spent the night and she and Jordyn were a huge help in this endeavor. Around 9pm, Kevin and I crashed our friend's Amy & Joel's family Christmas party. It's always fun to hang with them and their family...heck, they ARE family!
More Christmas Flurry fun to come...stay tuned