Catching up...

I thought I better go ahead and catch up from Christmas and all the festivities before tomorrow! What? It's already the beginning of another year!! Crazy. Time flies.
Anyways, Christmas was wonderful, crazy and busy all at the same time. We had a couple parties at our house, celebrated my birthday ( on the 20th) with an awesome surprise from Pete to a bed and breakfast and a fun weekend together (also included some shopping!) experienced the drama of Hope breaking her ankle, being in a cast for 7 days making it difficult to put pants over the cast and having major wardrobe drama to finding out a week later from the orthopedic Dr. that is was not broken after all!! They took the cast off and she cried for 15 minutes because she was sad to see all those sweet names of her friends leave her leg (oh yeah, AND the attention it brought her!) It took her a couple of days to be able to put full pressure on that ankle, but we are so happy to have found out it was fine... then we had school parties, shopped for gifts, wrapped gifts, exchanged gifts, Christmas Eve services (which were my favorite yet) get togethers with both sides of the family and extended family, spent lots of time finding out about our new little "guy" that we got the girls for Christmas, celebrated Christmas, went to the movies...................THEN on the 26th, we celebrated Pete's Birthday!
Usually, we pack it up the day after Christmas and go to Gatlinburg, TN for the Xtreme Conferences that Pete is the host/emcee of every year, but this year the girls and I stayed back for a few days and did a whole lot of NOTHING. I had to recoup and start getting Buster trained! He has done so good and we even brought him on his first road trip.
Now, we are in Gatlinburg ready to ring in 09 tonight with 6,000 of our closest friends! I was wondering what it is like to be anywhere else besides here on Dec. 31st! We have a great time up here. This is where we have been every year since 96.
Last night our adventure included Fanny Farkles (restaurant/arcade) at midnight only to be followed by a funnel cake! Nasty. I know:)
I can't believe Christmas is over AND that 08 has come to an end. It's been a wonderful year and I'm so thankful for all the Lord has blessed us with and done in our lives...... looking forward to 2009!! Happy New Year! Now it's time to party!!

Our Christmas Surprise!

I had to share a little video from our Christmas morning! We are excited to have added a member to the family! Updates coming to the blog world soon!! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas! xoxo

NYC...shop till ya drop or your arms break!

Last week, we had a 3 day (girls) shopping marathon trip to New York City! I LOVE that place especially at Christmas!  My mom didn't know what she was getting into! I think we embarrassed her one too many times before we even left the ATL airport!!

We did manage to take a break from shopping one afternoon and see Cirque De Soleil Windtuck. It was a fabulous show. 

There was not a lot of time for pictures, but I managed to leave with a few.

At the show when it started "snowing"
The Famous Christmas Tree!
Yes, It's Steven Tyler....as in Aerosmith!! The real person staying at our hotel! He was so nice. We are big fans!  

My arms are finally feeling better after carrying around shopping bags! How do those people do it that live there?  

Fun times.

Again.....never a dull moment!

Hope came home from school in kind of a cranky mood on Monday. No tears, just crabby. We went to some friends house for dinner that night and she started complaining that her ankle was bothering her...still no tears! On our way home, she fell asleep in the car, and we put her right to bed and the next morning I went to wake her up for school and she could not even stand up! Her ankle was HUGE:( I took her straight to Children's Hospital and sure enough she had a broken ankle!!  She had a fall at school but nothing major and she said it had been bothering her since then! This girl is a champ. I'm the horrible mother that had no idea my child had a broken bone until the following day! She has such a high tolerance for pain. 

She picked the purple cast and is doing great in it!  

By, 7:00 that same night, she was running around at a Christmas Party!

It the most wonderful time of the year....

and the busiest! We got home from our lovely warm vacation and hit the ground running getting ready for Christmas!  I have to admit, as much as I like the warmer weather that we usually have in GA, it does feel like Christmas this year! I can't remember it being this cold for this long!!  I was so unprepared until last week. We are all decorated, parties are planned, a few gifts have been bought, and our elf showed up again this year and is keeping tabs on my munchkins! Hope is really into this whole elf thing and she jumps out of bed each morning to see where he is for the day:)

Until next time.......  

My poor blog!

I've been neglectful! Maybe an update tomorrow:)  

x0x0-HHH