ooh, mimosas.. what a great way to deal with the family. i am so drinking tomorrow! *LOL*
i am kinda in the same boat as you tani, i don't celebrate the christian form of christmas, but in my case i just love the whole holiday time and figure a lot of the traditions my family celebrates are pagan based anyway so i just go with it. i did once have a big party for the solstice and the whole family came it was great.
anyway, i am ready. all presents wrapped but the ones i'm getting (the boys did decide they would wrap those ones themselves. *LOL*). I'm down to the chore of making mashed potatoes and slicing a pre-cooked ham. Woohoo. This may be the best holiday spent with the evil that is the in laws.
I'm at work til 6 today which is kind of a bummer, but that's okay. i never really understood why the day before a holiday should be a holiday too. oh well. :)

Happy whateveryoucelebrate day! :)

Have a wonderful Holiday weekend! :hug: :rudolph: :dreidel: :gift2: :snowglo:

Hope your holidays have been, are, and will be wonderful!!!

Clark thanks you all for your good wishes, and YES, he is a sweetie-pie!

Jessica-glad to hear you are feeling better.

HAPPY YULE EVERYONE!:snowglo:

Hope everyone is having fun with their families and friends :)

We had a great party last night and a quiet dinner with my parents this evening.

We had a traditional roast beef dinner with all the trimmmings and Yorkshire Pudding (the puds turned out great especially since this is only the 2nd time I have ever made them so I am quite pleased with myself :D )

My mum made trifle and we finished off the evening with deep discussions over a glass of Scotch :xcheer:

Tomorrow we are having some friends over for turkey and a gift exchange, Tuesday we visit DH's family and then Wednesday we are hosting a video game night with some other friends. Hmmm..maybe I will just sleep through New Year's :faint: :lol:

So what did everyone else do?

Hi Everyone! Hope you all had a safe and happy holiday. :hug:

Allen and I had very nice and quiet holiday yesterday. We had a small wind storm Sat nite so we woke up to a few downed trees and debris everywhere but nothing tragic. :dizzy:

After I got the turkey in the oven we went for a walk and fed the animals and checked out the storm damage. Then we went up to the road to chat with a neighbor that was clearing a tree that blocked the road. :p

My dinner was ready at noon (necessary to give Allen time to eat it all before leaving for work today - trucker on road for 3). We had turkey, stuffing, veggies, yams and I made a blueberry pie and choc chip cookies. :devil:

After we ate we took a short nap and then took the horse for a long walk and gave them a Christmas Brushing.

I made calls to all the family in Portland and the 2 of us just relaxed together.

It was really great that he had been off since my vacation started on Wed so we had 5 days together. And we definately made the most of it. *wink*

Many Blessings to everyone from whichever source you prefer to be blessed by if at all. :D

Hi Chicas,

My Christmas was great. Does anyone remember me this time last year? I have a HARD time with Christmas because I hate the holiday. But the Cute Boyfriend loves it. So I've been doing my best to make the most of it. This year I did a pretty good job. We made a duck (our tradition) and had our Christmas Eve Tiki bash. We also do mimosas! How funny.

I got a lot of great gifts. Including a kitchen table! Okay, not yet. CB is smart enough not to try to pick out the kitchen table by himself. :) We went shopping for one last night. We found two I loved so I want to mull it over for awhile.

Okay, inquiring minds. Here's a pic of which print he got for Christmas!

The windmill picture is beautiful! yay!

Our mimosas were yummy and I didn't get in a fight with my sister's boyfriend. I'm calling it a successful holiday ;)

I have a funny fruitcake story. My grandmother makes fruitcake for all her kids every year. Actually it's Australian wedding cake, but similar deal. It's high proof and very yummy. Well this year one of my uncles ate all of his early, and asked her for the recipe so he could make some more before xmas... she wouldn't give it to him. This is only funny because she gave the recipe to my mom (her daughter in law) like 5 years ago. It was all my mom could do her keep a straight face as my uncle told her the story on the phone. She's now on cloud nine from being worthy of the recipe ;)

Figures, I just re-commit, saying "I'm gonna be here darn it" and then I disappear. :rolleyes: I'm not typically this flighty, really!

So happy to hear you all had nice a Yule/Christmas! Ours was quiet, the first without my stepfather, but it wasn't quite as emotional as I thought it would be. We had a slew of people over and were so busy it just flew by. Yule was beautiful, had tons of candles burning and a huge dinner, followed by hours of talking and laughing. Need to do that more often, I think it's good for the soul.

Looking forward to my birthday next Wednesday, I don't feel like I can jump whole heartedly back on the wagon until ALL the nasty food is out of the house (almost gone). My girlfriend, her husband, my mom and I are all heading to Weight Watchers together! Should be, ahem, fun.

Just gotta deal with stress now. My best friend in CA went into labor on Christmas morning (water broke, contractions, the whole thing) and she's only 27 weeks pregnant. They got things stopped, but now obviously she'll be in the hospital for, Gods willing, weeks. Little boy's doing just fine though, hanging in there and growing (hopefully). In the sonogram they did in the ER on Christmas he weighed in at a whopping 1 pound 12 ounces.

Otherwise, honestly feeling that next year will be a blessed year. I feel a lot of good things coming in our lives. I hope I'm right!

Terri :newyear:

Happy New Year All!
 

Well this is 2006 - and here we are. Hope everyone had a safe and happy ringing in of the new year. :hug:

Now we just need a new thread for chat, exercise and goals. :D

Myself, I get to dissassemble the tree and clean house. I was going to go shopping but there has been so much flooding around here and yesterday our bridge was completely under water - by about 10 inches, but the water levels have dropped, thank fully. Now we just have to worry about erosion and wind.

Whats everyone else doing today?

I should be laying in bed reading watching the trees blow around - since my vacation ends Tues., but I wont.

DH is living at 2 - so maybe this afternoon - we'll see if I get to lay around or not. :devil:

Later chicks!

pj -wow, i'm dou\ing about the same thing today. it's not flooding in eugne, but i did wake up earlier than i'd like to the sound of wind whipping around our building and rain pounding down. can't believe all the floods around here, but am grateful it hasn't hit our area. i did the floods in 96 down in california and it was horrible. we had to evacuate the morning of new years day, 1/1/97. every where we went the roads were washed out and we'd have to turn around and try to find some other way to get out. took us about 4 or 5 hours just to get from marysville to sacramento because of the roads, usually takes about 1 hour tops.

anyway, i'm going to put away christmas and clean up the house. my new years eve was uneventful and meh as per usual. fine by me.

It's rainy and windy here too. I just got back from taking the dog for an hour walk in the sloshiness. No threats of flooding here at least. Cleaning is on my schedule today too. I'm even (hopefully) going to wash the carpets.