Awesome Christmas
Warning: This is really long


I have had the most awesome Christmas this year. And it's funny because I didn't really have much of the Christmas spirit until sometime the night of Christmas Eve. This is how it went:

After Noah got off work on Christmas Eve, we headed down to his parents house. His parents have a pretty good sized house, so lots of family comes from out of town and stay there for Christmas. And this year, that also included noah's sister and her husband who live in Hawaii. I was pretty excited to see them and find about how things have been going for them . They have only been living in Hawaii for about a year now, and before that they lived in Oklahoma.

His Aunt Alice and Uncle Larry were there also. They are a couple of the most huggy, loveable people in the world, which can be kind of annoying at times, but is fairly enjoyable most of the time. Mikayla loved having Larry hold her and walk around with her. I'm pretty sure it was because he's a pretty tall guy and she liked the view......hehe

As a matter of fact, Mikayla was pretty much the social butterfly that night. She didn't have a problem being passed around to everyone like we were affraid that she might, considering that most of these people she doesn't see very often. She wanted to be passed around, reaching for other people as they got close, as if to say "you pick me up". She was in a really good mood, only getting a little crabby as the night got late.

We had a really nice dinner with some ham, ribs, potato salad, and rolls. Not a whole lot of variety, but it was really good food so it didn't matter. After we ate, we all sat down in the livingroom where we exchanged gifts. Noah's sister Amy (from Hawaii) played Santa and passed the gifts around. Mikayla wondered around the livingroom, and whoever she was closest to when it was her turn, helped her unwrap the gift. I loved having everyone be so warm and sweet to mikayla, as if she was their own child. Two of the ladies that were there, including Alice, have never been able to have children, so I'm sure that could be one reason why they are so close to her, besides the fact that they are family.
Mikayla got some really cute Winnie the Pooh (not more winnie the pooh......aaaaaahhhhh......lol) and Elmo toys. She got some more clothes and lots of kisses :)
I got a couple of really nice sweaters and a cute renesance (however you spell that) type shirt. I also recieved some really neat stuff to decorate the house with, like a mini wooden bench to sit some stuffed teddy bears on. I'll have to take a picture of it and post it sometime. Noah got some WWII stuff (he's really into world war II), a couple of books about tanks and anti-tank weapons and stuff. He also got some shirts and a couple of really nice dragon figurines. We still haven't decided where to put the dragons, we really don't have any room or any shelves to put them on. They might have to be stored away until we get a house. :(

As the night went on, some of us drank beers and chatted, others ran off in the other room to mess with a computer (not naming any names here....lol), but it went really good. Got to talk to everyone and find out what was going on in their life. Even got Noah's dad to talk a little bit about the Navy.
He was in the Navy during the Vietnam War, but he doesn't talk about it. Noah was surprised when he brought it up. It wasn't like he came out and started going off on all these stories, but he did say a few things. Which, from what I hear, is a lot more than noah has ever heard him say.

We decided to leave around midnight, considering that Mikayla had not been to sleep yet and that we had to get up at 6am to get to my sister Lana's and unwrap gifts. So we packed Mikayla and gifts up, and headed home. The drive usually takes a little under an hour, because we live a little bit of a distance away from his parents house. It's a pretty smooth drive because it's all interstate, about 70mph.

We were probably about 20 minutes away from home when the car started to shake pretty bad. Noah slowed down, and I told him to pull off to the side of the road because it felt like it was a flat tire. As soon as we stopped I hopped out and smelt the burn rubber. Yup, it was a flat tire, on Christmas Eve, at 12:30 in the morning. So the adventure began....lol

Well, it wasn't really that much of an adventure, but it wasn't all bad either. Noah didn't want to bother with changing the tire, considering that we had a membership to AAA that would come out and do it for us. He gave them a call, and they said they would call him back. Within 5 minutes, a police officer pulled up behind us. We got out to tell the officer that we had a flat and that AAA was going to come out and fix it. He told us that he would call someone and that they would get there faster.
The officer stayed behind us the whole time we were on the side of the road. He wanted to make sure that there wasn't any drunk drivers or whoever come along and slam into us. He was really nice, and had someone out to fix the tire in prolly 20 mins from when he first showed up.

The neat thing about the whole event wasn't the blown tire (certainly not), or even the extremely nice police officer. While we were out there waiting for the tow truck guy to come fix the tire, it began to snow. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself, as if God had his own way of telling us Merry Christmas. It was really neat. Just the three of us, Mikayla sleeping, sitting on the side of the road listening to christmas tunes on the radio, waiting for the tire fixer guy to come. It was peaceful, yet crazy, yet calmingly eerie.

The guy showed up and fixed our tire in about 10 mins. The police officer backed up to do what he called 'traffic control'. It looked to me like he backed up and put on his turn signal to make it look like he was going to try and merge back into traffic to get the oncoming cars to move into the other lane. Either way, he was really nice. I wanted to give him a little seal beanie baby as a thank you/christmas gift, and thank him for being out on christmas eve, but he drove away before I had the chance. Whoever he is, I thank him. :)

We didn't get to sleep until around 2:30, so we didn't get up until a little after 7am. I was scared that Lana's boys were already up, because they really wanted to rip into their gifts (well, maybe caleb more than cameron, caleb's been asking about santa and presents for more than a week.....lol). I called her and she reassured me that they weren't awake yet. So we hurried up and got the gifts loaded in the car, and made it up there around a little after 8am. I assumed that they'd want to rip into the gifts as soon as we got there, but caleb seemed to want to take his gifts one at a time. Just opening one and playing with it and then opening another. So I decided that we should make some breakfast. Noah and I brought up some bacon and sausage and other breakfast foods so everyone could eat. Noah and I cooked up breakfast for everyone. JR, my mom, Lana, Keith, and us. The boys didn't eat eggs, so we didn't make anything for them. As a matter of fact, I can't remember them eatting anything all morning.....hmmmmm.......lol

Anywho, we opened gifts all morning long, little by little. Around 10am, my mom decides that she has a gift she wants to give. So she grabs into her purse and pulls out a small black box and small piece of paper with some writting on it. Everyone kinda hushed and looked at each other. I think we all knew what it was, but didn't know what to say. Can you say SURPRIZE!? She turned to JR, who was laying on the couch next to her (because he is recovering from having the kidney taken out), and she began to cry. She stuggled with reading what she had written, and even stopped a few times because of the tears. It was really quite sweet, the things she was saying. Although I am still trying to figure out why she asked him to 'merge' with her, and not 'marry' her. Oh well, we all understood what she meant. She even made a joke about taxes, saying that she might not want to make it legal because the government penalizes married couples (basically they take more of your money). But I don't think that is going to keep her from marrying him. He has stopped drinkin since the initial accident when he fell out of the tree back in October (I think it was october), and my mom has always said that is why she left him. "His stinkin' drinkin'", she used to say. She has been with him everyday since his accident, so I guess it was just a matter of time before they would get back together for good.

Needless to say, we were all blown away by the proposal. Lana and I both have it on camcorder considering we were taping the kids unwrapping gifts. It will make for a very good memory. It's kinda weird really, when kids whose parents get divorced and they want them to get back together. You think that only the young kids feel that way. But I guess I'm kinda happy like one of those kids would be if there parents were getting re-married again. Granted, my mom and JR never got married to begin with, but they were together, we were all together, from when I was a little baby to when I was about 12. So I guess it was like a divorce, without all the legal crap.

To sum it all up, it was an awesome christmas. Mikayla made out like a bandit, Lana's boys had fun (for the most part....lol), and Noah and I gave and got some really cool stuff. Lana got me a ton of web graphics and 35,000 fonts (don't ask me what the hell I'm gonna do with all of them.......lol), and she got Noah a bunch of games he has really been wanting. I'm still tryin to absorb my mom's marriage proposal to JR, but that will come with time. I'm really happy for them. It's about damn time.....lol

I hope you had a really good Christmas too! And to tell you the truth, I can't believe you made it all the way to the end of this entry!
I'll keep ya posted on how the New Year is rung in. Right now it's looking like we'll prolly be spending it with Noah's sister from Hawaii.
Ta Ta For Now!