It's all over but the shoutin'!

And by the shoutin' I mean the "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" drill.

My holiday was hectic, hurried, busy, fun, happy, busy, tiring, wonderful, and did I mention busy?

Yeah.

I'm sure yours was the same.

My friend told me 3 days before Christmas that her daughter got up at 4 am last year (she was 10 at the time). I said, if my kid got up that early, I'd send him straight back to bed. Well, payback's a... um... you know what.

Kid did NOT get up that early. If he had, I WOULD have sent him straight back to bed. It wasn't my kid. It wasn't DH. It surely wasn't me... It was Lulu. The puppy. DH leaves for work just after 5 am. He lets her out each day at that time, so she's used to getting up. Normally, after being let out, she'll go back to her cage and sleep. NOT the case on Christmas morn! I got up, at 4:41 am- no, I'm NOT joking, and let her out. She went, came back in, I put her back in her cage and then was treated to an hours worth of yipping, yowling, crying, and howling.

At 5:30 I gave up and let her out. At 6:00- i was still awake, of course, b/c she can't be w/o a human, so she was crawling all over us in bed. Jingle was up there too, and they fought, played, nipped, and generally drove me nuts- Oh.. I digress. At 6:00 I got up and went to shut the kid's bathroom door (it's a jack n jill bath from his room to the family room). When I did that, he said "HI" and scared the poo outta me (um... not literally- tho I was standing inside the bathroom at the time of the poo scaring). I asked how long he'd been up, and he said since Lulu starting yowling. Asked why he didn't get up, he said b/c I told him it was too early and he'd set his alarm at the "mom oked time of 6:30). I told him to go ahead and get up! He ripped into his pressies and loved them all. He even loved the jammies from Christmas Eve.

The grandparents came at about 9 am for brekkie, and then pressies with part of them (the other part of them we open pressies with at night).

I put the ginormo ham in at 10 am and baked and cooked and vegged til the others arrived for supper. That was my side of the fam. Pressies and food with them, and.......... then.......... shew. Just us. Quiet time. lol.

I got mostly cash for Christmas (um..yay) so I treated myself to new barstools and a new stand for the tv in our front room. Yesterday DH installed under the cabinet lights for me in the kitchen. nice too! I also got a cappuccino machine from my parent's... um...... yummers!

Here's a pic of my barstools and tv stand. Now the TV stand was a problem for us. We didn't want anything super big, so we'd been using a bookshelf! This one was just the right size. Our front (living room) isn't large, so size ...uh...matters! Our family room is hugemongo.. so no problem there. Have the big ole TV in it and all that jazz. Not important.. sorry...

Here are the pics, and please post and tell me your goodies! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and made lots of memories! Wishing you all the best in 2009!