Good grief, I've turned into such an intermittent blogger lately. This summer has been incredibly busy and I have missed blogging so much!


Mr. P and I just returned from a short vacation to the beach with some friends. We could only stay a couple of days, but it was great to have a few days of R and R at the beach. The weather was great and we didn't really do much except hang out at the beach during the day and go out to dinner at night. We played putt-putt golf one night and shopped another night. All in all, a great relaxing, albeit short, trip with some dear friends.



Does anyone else get on a quest to find the perfect "something" and not rest until you find it? I have a bad habit of doing this, and my latest quest has been a new planner. Every summer since I moved from teaching to being an administrator, I have bought an academic planner/calendar for the upcoming year. Usually they are easy to find this time of year, in a variety of sizes and styles. In late June, after Mr. P and I had been out to dinner, I stopped in at Office Depot to find a new planner for me. I knew that I wanted one with both weekly and monthly planning, and I needed one with lots of lines for various school activities and appointments each day. Well, they didn't have what I wanted, so I moved on to Staples, Target, TJ Maxx, and some stationary stores without finding what I was looking for. It seemed as if I found one I liked, it didn't start until January 2010, and I didn't like any of the ones that started in August 2009. I went online and checked out some possibilities, but I really wanted to be able to see the planner and look through it, so I didn't order one.



On our last night at the beach, I was shopping for birthday presents for my niece and sister in law. I went in a boutique to look at some Vera Bradley items, and it was in there that I found the perfect planner! I had checked Vera Bradley online for a planner, but I must have somehow missed these. So I very excitedly bought the 2010 Agenda (starts in August 2009) in Blue Rhapsody, and spent a very relaxing hour yesterday writing dates in my new pretty planner. Honestly, I'm such a geek sometimes! Needless to say, Mr. P is very relieved that I finally found what I was looking for-it was getting almost obsessive and he had very patiently trailed along with me through numerous stores.

Shopping Finds

On Tuesday, I decided at the last minute to take a quick trip to Bowling Green to do some shopping. I wanted a suit for a Very Important Appointment on Wednesday evening (more details on that later). Although I have a mall, TJ Maxx, and Kohl's in my little town, Bowling Green's mall is bigger and has a Macy's and a Dillard's. BG also has Talbot's and Chico's, so I knew that my shopping choices would be much bigger in the big BG. I also like the TJ Maxx and Kohl's a little better-bigger stores and better selections. So with Mr. P working late, I headed south after finishing my day at school. I started out at TJ Maxx, and worked my way through every store listed above, and ended up back at TJ Maxx, where I found the perfect suit. In the course of my shopping escapades, I found some great things and saved some major $$!

Green Polo shirt:

Regular Price $60.00, sale price $24.00

Jones New York plaid shorts to match:

Regular Price $49.99, on sale for $14.99

Jones New York suit:

(This isn't the exact suit I bought, but it was the closest image I could find. I forgot to take a picture of my suit before I wore it last night, and now it is all wrinkled. The joys of a linen suit! My suit has a round collar and is navy. I absolutely love it-it is so "me". )

Regular Price $280.00, on sale for $39.99

Value of Clothes: $389.99

Total at Checkout: $84.77

Minus $25.00 Gift Card=$59.77-yeah!

Next stop, Kohl's. I didn't really find anything there (surprising, I know), but I had some Kohl's cash that I needed to spend, so I bought a new bra (I'll spare you a pic of that!).

Regular Price: $32.00

Sale Price: $22.00

Total at Checkout: $23.32

Minus Kohl's Cash=$3.32-I like that!

I also bought new ink cartriges and stocked up on hair spray, but I won't bore you with the details of those. So in conclusion, I came home with a shirt, pair of shorts, dress suit, bra, ink cartriges, and 3 cans of hair spray, all for a little over $100. Oh, and I couldn't resist these little cuties in the checkout line at Staples...

Given my affinity for school/office supplies, the fact that they are pink, and the pink ribbon...there was no way to resist these!

Beautiful Weekend

I hope that everyone enjoyed their weekend as much as we did. On Friday night Mr. P had to work late, so I had an evening to myself. I brought take-out home (mac and cheese from one of my favorite restaurants) and spent the evening catching up on all of my blogs. My little two-month hiatus meant that I had a lot of reading to do! I enjoyed reading and catching up with everyone's lives. I've certainly missed out on a lot of things!

We slept in a little on Saturday morning, then got up and went out to breakfast together. We were leaving the restaurant and my cell phone rang. It was our friend M asking if we wanted to meet him for a round of golf. Of course we said yes, so we quickly went home, got everything together and went to meet M. It was slightly overcast and there was a light breeze blowing, so it didn't get too hot. I thought it was perfect weather for golf.

Saturday evening, we decided to try our cookout at the pond again. It was supposed to storm later on, but we hoped that it wouldn't get rained out a second time. Luckily, the storms stayed away and we were able to fish and grill out. The boys caught several fish, and I even caught a big bass and a big catfish. We had a great time!

This is the bass and the catfish that little ol' me caught! Yes, I'm too much of a girly-girl to get my fish off the hook. I wouldn't even hold the bass to get my picture taken with it. I thought we had a picture of me and Mr. P with the bass, but I guess it didn't take.

Here is one of the boys checking out the fish he caught. They would get so excited when they caught a fish!

I took this silly picture of Sunny. Of course she had to have her nose into everything while we were fishing. I was trying to take pictures of the boys and she kept dancing around my feet, wanting me to take her picture, so I snapped this one. It turned out so cute!

We were supposed to go out on the lake this afternoon, and then go celebrate my father-in-law's birthday this evening. But Mr. P has a cold, so we decided to skip the trip to the lake. We went over to my in-laws for a little while, but then we decided to come on home so that Mr. P could rest.

I haven't blogged about this, but I've been trying to lose weight for the past couple of months. I've lost about 10 pounds (and I still have more to go), but it's been so fun to fit into clothes that I haven't worn the last couple of years. Last summer, I bought a cute black dress with white polka dots on it. It was a little snug, but instead of taking it back, I said that I would lose a few pounds to fit into it but I never did. I do this all the time-does anyone else do that?? Well, this morning I tried the dress on and it fit! In fact, it is a little loose on me-yeah!! So I wore it to church and felt so good!

We've spent the evening watching a movie and resting up for the week ahead. Mr. P made reservations for a camping weekend at the end of June with two other couples. Fishing, camping, I'm turning into a regular outdoorsy kind of girl-which is so unlike me! We'll be tent camping, but the campground does have facilities with hot showers-that was a requirement for me!

I'm working tomorrow, but I don't have to be in until around 9:00-have I mentioned that I love summer break??

I hope that everyone had a great weekend!

TPP

A Busy Week

I hope that everyone had a fun and relaxing Memorial Day. Our friends D and R invited us to spend the day with R's family at their cabin on the lake. We all decided to travel by boat to the cabin, and it was such fun to get the boat out for the first time this year.

I spent the day on Wednesday catching up on paperwork and trying to get my office re-organized. The last few weeks of school were so hectic, and my normally organized desk and office are too cluttered. I was in training all day today, and I also have it all day tomorrow.

I met my great friend Lori B for dinner last night and we had a great time. We hadn't seen each other in a few weeks and it was wonderful to relax and catch up on things.

Mr. P is working on another big project, so he is working long hours again. I was home early, so I got on the treadmill as soon as I got home (yay me!) and I've spent the rest of the evening catching up on my reality shows. I've watched Real Housewives of NJ, Southern Belles: Louisville (just in time for another episode tonight), and right now I'm watching lost footage of the Real Housewives of NYC.

Boring post tonight-sorry about that : ) I have a summer/favorite things post in mind, but I was too tired to take pics tonight.

Tomorrow's Friday! I love short weeks!

Please Remember

Thanks to all of the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our great country. May God bless and bring comfort to your family and friends. Thank you for your service and dedication.

"I thank God for my life

For the stars and stripes

May freedom forever fly, let it ring.

Salute the ones who died

And the ones that gave their lives

So we don’t have to sacrifice

All the things we love"

Summer Officially Starts Tomorrow!

I can't believe that it is already summertime, and I couldn't be more ready for it!

Mr. P and I have enjoyed our weekend and we get a bonus day tomorrow. Yesterday, we went golfing in the morning, then we drove down to Bowling Green for dinner and shopping. We both got a new pair of running shoes. We've decided to train to run a 5K on July 4 at our local community festival, so we both needed a good pair of shoes.

Today, we attempted to have a cookout at our pond with our friends D and R and their boys, but the weather didn't cooperate. The sun was shining when we got started, but ominous storm clouds were approaching...

We only got to fish for about 15 minutes before the rain came and we had to relocate back at the house. However, we did manage to catch a couple of fish before we left. The boys each caught two fish and they were tickled! Here are a few pics, but the boys are in most of my pics and I didn't want to post their pictures on my public blog.

Sunny supervising the activities, as usual. Note the Vols chair, but the UK t-shirt. I'm the lone orange in a sea of blue around here!

The catfish that one of the boys caught. It was a big one!

Unfortunately, the rain came shortly after that, so we headed back to our house. We grilled the burgers and hot dogs on the deck, and they were yummy!

If the weather cooperates, we are going to a cookout on the lake tomorrow with some friends. I need to get up early in the morning and catch up on laundry before we leave. School has kept me so busy the last few weeks, and my house is driving me crazy. My girls are coming to clean on Tuesday-thank goodness!-so if I can get my laundry caught up too, then maybe things will feel like they are back to normal around here.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday weekend!

Well, hello!

Oh, my...it has been a month and a half since my last post! I apologize for disappearing on everyone. I'm not going to make any excuses (life just got busy), I'm just going to jump right back into blogging and pretend that I didn't neglect my readers for the last month or so and hope that I haven't lost all the readers that I had : )

Nothing exciting has been going on in the Putter household. We are both just busy with work. Mr. P is still working a lot of hours and a lot of weekends, but hopefully this job will finish up in the next 3 weeks or so. We are down to about a month of school left, with state testing starting in two weeks, so there are a lot of things going on there too. Mr. P and I are both hoping to get out and hit some golf balls soon. We already have 3 tournaments scheduled for June, so we need to get some practice time in.

I went shopping yesterday with my great friend L. We had a wonderful time eating at California Pizza Kitchen and shopping. We had so much fun hitting up some of our favorite stores.

I found a pair of great cropped denim trousers at Coldwater Creek for $49. I debated on getting them, and then I talked myself out of buying them (does anyone else do that??). After we left the mall, we stopped at Kohl's and they had an almost exact pair in the Dana Buchman line for $46, on sale for $27. So I scored a great pair of cropped pants for half the price-you can't beat that, can you?

We browsed in Brighton for quite a while; it's one of my favorite stores. They have such cute stuff, and I bought this little ponytail holder. My hair has gotten quite long, and I like to pull it back. I've been looking for some good hair accessories, and this one certainly fits the bill.

I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago during my spring break and I bought a Tervis tumbler with a pink monogram on it. The only color they had was pink, so I didn't get one for Mr. P. Yesterday I found one with a black monogram, so now we have a matching set!

It was a rainy, rainy day here. Mr. P and I went to church, out to lunch, grocery shopping, and spent the rest of the day inside. I've been kind of lazy this afternoon, but I need to get up and straighten the house, do some laundry, and finish a little bit of school work.

I hope that everyone is doing well. I'll try to be better about posting in the future : )

Time has flown by...

Wow, I haven't posted since February 6th! I knew that it had been a while since my last post, but my goodness, I didn't realize that it had been so long.

I have to share this cute bag that I gave my niece K. She is a big LSU fan, and I found this cute purple and gold polka-dotted bag a couple of days before Christmas and bought it for her as a last-minute gift. I wanted to get it monogrammed for her, but I didn't have time before Christmas. She absolutely loved it and didn't want to give it back right away for the monogramming. She finally gave it back to me a couple of weeks ago, and I had it monogrammed for her. She goes to college about an hour away from us, so I'm going to fill the bag with some goodies and meet her for dinner one night this week.

Busy week ahead for me...my plans with K., along with a Dr. Seuss night at school, and a couple of late afternoons at school. Hopefully it will be the weekend again before I know it!

Spring Shopping Finds

The sun was out today and the weather was warm, which put me in a spring mood. And what better way to keep that spring mood than to do some spring shopping! I've started looking for an Easter dress already (yeah, I know we're not even close to Ash Wednesday yet, but I'm in the mood for some spring fashion!) and I came across some cute, cute finds that I thought I would share.

Of course, what better place to start than at Lilly? A few items caught my eye...

The Nancy sweater

Kelan dress in true navy-love it!

Jefferson skirt in seersucker-I can totally see this with a crisp white blouse for school.

Elias dress

I also perused some other sites and found some more great stuff.

Isn't this the cutest white denim swing jacket?

Love this dress from LaurenRalphLauren-an Easter possibility.

And finally this Swiss-dot dress from JCrew-another Easter possibility.

I would have loved to have ordered one of everything, but that would not have been very fiscally responsible of me, now would it? So for now, I'm just window-shopping : )

Have a great weekend!

I Think That the Wii Might Be Right...

Remember the post where the Wii asked me if I found myself tripping when I walked? Well, it proved to be correct today. I am sitting here aching from head to toe because I fell down the steps at church today. How embarrassing is that? I was walking down the stairs from the sanctuary to the basement, where my Sunday School class is held. I still don't know how I fell; I think that I either missed a step or my foot got caught on my long wool coat that I was carrying. Either way, I fell down the rest of the way and landed in a heap at the foot of the stairs. People came running, first aid kits were pulled out-all in all, I made a spectacle of myself and I absolutely hate doing that. Thankfully, I wasn't hurt. One knee got a little skinned up, and I'm kind of aching all over. Hopefully I'll be able to get out bed tomorrow morning! Honestly, I am such a klutz sometimes!!!

Okay, onto more cheerful and less embarrassing topics...

I discovered this week that I am very grumpy when I don't have my wireless internet. We recently bundled our telephone, internet, and satellite and got a free upgrade to a high speed internet in the process. This was great...until we discovered that our wireless router couldn't handle the higher speed internet. So for a couple of days, I was "tied" to a 3 ft. yellow cord in the bedroom or kitchen. Needless to say, I only got on the Internet when I absolutely had to. After two days of fighting with the old router, we broke down and bought a new router and all is right with my world now!

My parents visited this weekend and we had a wonderful time. I took a personal day on Friday so that I could spend the afternoon with them. It turned out to be a cold weekend, so we stayed in most of the time. We had my in-laws over for dinner last night. Mr. P made his potato cheese soup, and I made appetizers and desserts to go along with it. It was definitely my cheat meal of the week, but we had a great time with our families. Mr. P and I are really lucky that both sets of our parents get along great. We always have his parents over when my parents are visiting, and his parents usually come to my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

Mr. P made his soup in this...

our new red crock pot! I love the color because it matches our kitchen perfectly. I love cooking with a crock pot, and a few years ago, I asked for this for Christmas...

I thought it was so pretty and I loved it. However, it seemed like everything I cooked in it burned. I never used it unless I was going to be home all day to keep an eye on the food that was cooking in it, and what good is a crockpot if you can't leave it? We decided that it was the shape of the crock-it is very small at the bottom and then gets wider as it goes up. I don't think that it evenly distributed the heat. Finally the crock cracked, so I took it as a sign to get a new one. Mr. P and I shopped around and found the red one. It has a more uniform size, so hopefully it will function better than the white one.

I put a new comforter set on the guest bed this week. We received this as a housewarming gift from some friends of my parents a couple of years ago. I thought it was a really pretty set, but I had already bought a new set for the master bedroom when we moved in, and it was not the right size for our bed. I've debated on what to do with the set since I received it, and I felt bad that I hadn't used it. I usually keep a quilt that Mr. P's grandmother made on the guest bed, but I thought I might want something heavier for the winter months. I decided to try it out in the guest room, and I'm really happy with the results.

Mom and Dad said that it was very pretty and very warm, so I think that I'll keep this on during the winter months and switch back to Grandma's quilt for the summer months.

My mom and dad brought me the antique chocolate pot and cups from my grandparents' house this weekend. It is an absolutely beautiful set that goes perfectly with my china pattern. It is still packed up in the box, but I will take some pics and post them when I get it unpacked. Such a special gift from them....

The weather people are calling for snow again this week. I love the snow days, but I'll be whining at the end of the school year when we are making them up. .

I think I hear my Aleve bottle calling me...the achiness is starting to settle in.

Have a great evening!

Shopping Finds

I hope that everyone had a good weekend. We certainly did, especially the extra day off on Monday.

Has anyone checked out the new blog Slimmed Down Preppies? It was started by Tammy of Pink Cupcakes and Tab and Hicktowndiva and it is for weight loss tips, support, and successes. I'm a contributor to the blog now, and I put my first post up today. Stop by over there and see us sometime. I know that I need all the help that I can get!

Our shopping trip to Sam's Club was a bust on Saturday, because they weren't open for business yet! Mr. P had signed up for a membership card through his company, so we did get to go in and check on that. But the store won't be open for business until the 22nd.

Our trip to Target was much more successful. They have some of the cutest items in the dollar bins right now. Pink and green sponges, rubber gloves, and lint rollers to name a few.

And they had these cute Valentine's tea towels for only $2.50. I love the cupcake on the front. Don't they look cute hanging on my oven door?

I was also looking for a small ottoman for the great room. I looked at a few at Target and I almost bought a leather one there, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Imagine my surprise when I found just what I was looking for when I was grocery shopping at Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon. I love the stripes on this one, and it was only $25! It really matches the color scheme that I have in my great room, and it has storage underneath it. All of the Wii paraphernalia had been getting on my nerves and I was looking for a basket to put it all in. But now I have it neatly stowed in the ottoman!

I have to say, Mr. P was quite patient with all of my shopping. I'm a browser, and he was such a trooper while I wandered around in Target : )

TPP

Hello, stranger! (actually, you should be saying that to me, right?)

Hello, hello dear blogger/readers! I have been so neglectful of my blog lately and I do apologize. School has been extremely busy lately, but that's not my only excuse...I've been Facebooking and I have caught up with so many old friends from elementary school, high school, and college. Oh my, it is addictive!

I hope that everyone is having a nice weekend. It is cold, cold, cold here!

Mr. P and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner out last night. We've been so busy that it had been awhile since the two of us went out and enjoyed a nice dinner together. It just seems like we get home from work (usually late), fix something quick for dinner, watch a little tv, then go to bed and start the whole routine over again the next day. We ate here and I had one of my favorites, a Kentucky hot brown. This restaurant has the second-best hot brown in the state, with the best one being at the Brown Hotel, where the sandwich originated. We also brought home dessert, which for me was a piece of Kentucky pie. I will be logging extra time on Wii Fit for it because it is definitely not healthy food! But honestly, I enjoyed the quiet time with Mr. P more so than the good food. I'm mulling over a big personal decision right now, and this gave us a chance to weigh the pros and cons and have a long conversation about it.

I never posted a Christmas recap, so I'll post pics of gifts and such from time to time. Here are a few recent purchases or gifts.

I found these pink and white polka dotted flannel pajama pants when I was Christmas shopping. They have the cutest navy blue owls embroidered on them, and I immediately thought of The Pink Owl. And even though I was supposed to be shopping for others, I couldn't resist them. Besides, they were on sale and only $9.99. That was justifiable, right?

One of my cute Christmas gifts...

It has a cute little grosgrain ribbon to tie at the waist. I realized that it was a sad little bow that I had tied after the picture.

This is one of my favorite Christmas gifts from Mr. P. We've recently begun attending Sunday school (for more details see this post), and I have been wanting a student bible. This was one of the gifts that Mr. P gave me and I thought it was such a sweet, thoughtful gift.

I see a monogram in the future for the bible cover, don't you?

I also have a new cute sweatshirt for school that I really want to post a picture of, but I need to blur out some of the letters to keep my anonymity of where I work. Does anyone know how to do that? I have tried and tried and I can't figure out how to blur part of a picture. Any experts on that out there?

I had dinner with my friend Lori B the other night. She is one of the two friends in real life that reads my blog, and she playfully fussed at me for not posting lately. So Lori, I'm expecting a comment on this post! Hee hee! Lori is also thinking about starting a blog; I think she should, don't you?

Mr. P and I are on a quest to lose weight and be healthy, so expect a few posts here and there about my progress. One of my strategies is the Wii Fit, and anyone who has a Wii Fit knows about the body test you must take when you start. Well part of the body test is a balance test, and when I took the balance test, here is the message I got:

I am constantly tripping on things, and I have more than one embarrassing story involving me somehow managing not to stay vertical, so this message was absolutely hilarious to Mr. P and I.

Well, we are off to check out the newly-opened Sam's Club in town, and I'm going to try to coax a trip to Target out of Mr. P too. Tonight, we are going over to D and R's house for dinner and games (Wii, cards, and/or board games).

Have a great weekend everyone!

TPP

School Resumes Tomorrow

Well, my lovely winter vacation has come to an end. I hope that all of you have enjoyed your holidays as much as Mr. P and I did. We had some busy times with traveling, visiting, and celebrating, but we also had plenty of time to just relax around the house too. And yes, I will confess that I had a couple of days where I stayed in my PJ's and didn't leave the house! Despite all of that, I am ready to get back to school and into our usual routine.

Well, just as I thought the other day, we are now the owners of a Wii and a Wii Fit. It is a lot of fun, and it has kept Mr. P and I much more active during this rainy weekend. And since we are both anxious to lose some weight in the new year, the Wii Fit is going to be handy to have around for that also.


Well, I need to log off and get everything laid out for the morning. Have a great evening!

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a very happy New Year's Eve. Ours was pretty low-key, which is my favorite kind of New Year's celebration. We celebrated at our friends' D and R's house, along with our other friends, C and L, along with their kids. We ate snacks, played board games, and played games on the Wii.

The Wii is so much fun! I really wasn't interested in getting one, and Mr. P even asked me before Christmas if I wanted one, and I stupidly said no. But last night, we bowled, played soccer (well, dodged soccer balls), played baseball, and boxed. I took Mr. P down in boxing-yeah! Well, now we are both hooked, so there may be a Wii in the Pink house soon.

I'm taking the rest of the Christmas decorations down today, catching up on laundry, and doing various other household tasks. I have to work tomorrow (boo!), and I'd like to have all of my weekend chores finished today, so that I can work tomorrow, and then relax for the weekend.

Here's to a happy and healthy 2009 for everyone!

TPP

Christmas Recap, Part One

I hope that everyone had a fabulous Christmas. Mr. P and I certainly did! We had 3 days of travel, family, food, and fun, and a good time was had by all. I won't post many pictures in this post, but I promise to post pictures in part two.

Christmas Eve morning, we drove down to my parents' house. The weather was horrible-pouring rain with high winds the entire trip, making I-65 a nightmare. I was so glad when we finally made it, and my mother (who kept calling to check on us-good thing I wasn't the one driving!) was even more relieved. We made one stop at Opry Mills Mall, just to wander around for a little while. We were finished with our shopping, but we love to shop for a little while on Christmas Eve. We walked around, ate sugared pecans, and enjoyed the festive atmosphere.

We arrived at my parents' house around noon, and I helped Mom finish the preparations for the Christmas Eve dinner. The menu included many of my favorites including prime rib, green beans, and hash brown casserole. And of course, Mom's best desserts-Toll House pie, Hershey's Chocolate Cake, coconut cake, and an assortment of fudge and cookies. We had a pretty big crowd for dinner that included Mom, Dad, my brother, sister-in-law, niece, aunt and uncle, along with Mr. P and me. My brother is a policeman, and he was on duty Christmas Eve night, but he was able to stop by the house for dinner, and some of his fellow officers also stopped by throughout the night when they were on their dinner break. Mom and Dad have extended this invitation to all of my brother's fellow officers every year since he has been on the force, and it is great to see some of the same guys year after year. Luckily, the citizens were well-behaved and all of the officers were able to finish their meals before getting a call.

Mr. P and I attended the most beautiful church service on Christmas Eve night at a church near my parents' house. This has been a year of change for us with regards to religion, and I have had my moments of doubt about some decisions we have made. Long story short, I was raised Catholic, and had never really fallen away from attending Mass, except for when I was in college. Mr. P was raised Methodist, but began attending Mass with me after we had been married a couple of years, and became a Catholic about 6 years ago. We dutifully attended Mass every Sunday, but in the past couple of years have really struggled with our church and the way things are done, particularly the way people who were not born and raised in that church are treated. Around Easter of this year, we decided to try going to the Methodist church that Mr. P grew up in, and which many of our friends attend. It is such a welcoming church, and we have been very happy there. I feel that Mr. P and I have grown closer to each other spiritually, and I feel that I have grown closer in my relationship to God. Not to mention the tremendous amount of support that we received when Mr. P's dad was sick-so many prayers, visits, phone calls, and food. We were truly touched by everything that people did for us, and although I have tried not to be judgemental or critical of our former church, I know we would not have received the same support. Despite all that, I have struggled to be at peace with my decision to not attend a Catholic church right now-it's just hard to make such a big change after 38 years. Mr. P and I have talked about it, and he has been wonderful in helping me work through this. You're probably sitting there wondering how I went from Christmas festivities to a heavy religion post, but it comes back to the Christmas Eve service we attended. It was an absolutely beautiful candlelight service that truly touched my heart, giving me that much-needed sense of peace that I was doing the right thing.

Sorry this post took a serious turn-it was a little unexpected for me too! Okay, back to the Christmas festivities...

We spent Christmas Eve night at my parents' house, and exchanged Christmas presents on Christmas morning with my family. It was great to just kick back and enjoy each other and have fun opening our gifts. We followed that up with our annual Christmas breakfast, with more of our favorite dishes from Mom-egg casserole, cheese grits, sausage balls, and more.

After breakfast, Mr. P and I drove back home, where we took a few minutes to exchange our gifts to each other. We kept our gifts to each other fairly simple this year, but we had fun exchanging them. We've had years where both of us went overboard on gifts for each other, but I think I enjoyed this year more. Mr. P got me some really thoughtful gifts, but I'll post pics and details in another post.

Christmas with Mr. P's family was also a lot of fun. His sister has four kids, ages 10, 8, 5, and 3, so it was considerably louder than my family's celebration, but it was a lot of fun. Here is a picture of Mr. P and the kids playing Santa:

One of the gifts his sister gave me was the Trivial Pursuit 80's Edition, and one of our nephews got Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, so we played board games on Christmas night and had a blast. We didn't get home until after 11 o'clock, so we were exhausted, and still had one more family gathering the next day.

On Friday, Mr. P and I, along with his parents and his sister's family headed to out of town for the day to celebrate with his uncle's family. More food, more presents, more fun....

Sorry I don't have very many pictures from the family gatherings. I have a bad habit of getting so into the festivities that I forget to take pictures...more pictures in the next recap, I promise!

So Mr. P and I have spent today recovering from all of our travels and festivities. We slept in, enjoyed a late breakfast, and other than straightening up the house, we relaxed most of the day. It has been unusually warm today, in the 70's, but very windy. We have a band of thunderstorms due to come through tonight. I'm keeping an eye on the radar right now, because thunderstorms make me nervous!

Merry Christmas!

In the chaos of my final Christmas preparations, I have neglected my wonderful blog friends! Mr. P and I hosted a family Christmas celebration at our house on Sunday, which kept us super busy all weekend. I had to work on Monday, and yesterday was spent doing last minute Christmas tasks. Mr. P's sister and her family have been in town since Sunday, so we've been spending time with them at my in-law's house. I do apologize and I promise to be more diligent once Christmas is over. I'm hoping to have lots of blogging/reading time next week.

Mr. P and I are heading south to my parents' house in a little while to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family. We will have a Christmas Eve dinner at my parents' house tonight with my brothers' family and some of my mother's family. Tomorrow morning, we will exchange gifts with my parents and my brother's family and have a Christmas breakfast, which includes my mom's cheese grits-yum!

Mr. P and I will head back north after breakfast, and after a quick stop at home, we will spend the rest of the day with Mr. P's parents and his sister's family. On Friday, we will head out of town again (but just for the day) with Mr. P's parents and his sister's family to have one more Christmas celebration with more of Mr. P's family.

Christmas always seems like such a whirlwind time for us, and sometimes it seems like we don't have time to even catch our breath between family gatherings! That said, I would rather have too many things to juggle than to have nothing to go to. Mr. P and I are both blessed with great families, and we are truly thankful to have such wonderful parents, siblings, and family members in our lives.

I wanted to take a minute to tell my blog friends how thankful I am that I discovered this little blog world this year. I count all of you as my friends (although it's hard to explain to a non-blog person!) and as I'm reflecting on my blessings in the past year, you all are definitely on the list.

Have a wonderful Christmas!