Per Request

Ok All Right I know I owe you all a Holiday Post!

Monica. I am so sorry but I honestly did not take any actual Christmas photos this year (other than those previously posted). Yikes! Just a few of the tree. Ooops. I was too busy unwrapping!

This year was a big affair for us. We kick started the holidays with a family wedding December 17th. David's cousin PC got married to his beautiful fiance CS. They are a perfect couple. We can't wait to spoil all the little ones they are bound to have! The wedding was gorgeous and the reception was a blast. I danced until my husband kicked me out :)

The 18th we celebrated X-mas with the Hansen family. Santa Hansen spoiled us all rotten. David got the best gift (obvious because of the oohs and ahhhs that followed opening) a shop vac! Suhweet. He also got another big ticket item, a tool workbench/storage set. My big gift was an area rug for the basement. I also got the awesome running gear I posted earlier. In addition to that I got a much needed iron, I finally used it the other day and I LOVE it. The steam shooter thing works great, I really am quite the homemaker see ;). I got a nice candle set for my dining room, some cute cat placemats, a cozy purple sweater, gloves for running, a fall decoration (a scarecrow looking guy, pretty cute!), a new bear ornament for the tree, a kitty calendar, bath and body works smelly stuff, I am sure I am forgetting something. Like I said spoiled rotten!

David's sister and boyfriend got us 3 DVD's, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, French Kiss, and Chocolat. I haven't seen the first yet but that was the gift of choice this year :) Everyone in the Hansen family received it :) I absolutely love French Kiss and Chocolat. I am sure they will both get watched way more than their fair share. David's brother and his wife got us both gift cards to Home Depot. These will definitely get put to good use. I am thinking digital thermostat...

We got dad Hansen a turtleneck and a cool little vacuum set for cleaning his computer keyboard. Mom Hansen got two pairs of earrings. Sis Hansen got a chocolate Hershey kiss fondue pot and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and her boyf got a set of dominoes. We got David's bro and his wife a couple of games, a drinking game and one of those myth or not quiz games. David was wonderful this year and saved me most of the shopping woes. My only duty was to pick out moms earrings.

After opening gifts and eating a delicious brunch (Lots of goodies including Mimosa!) we headed out to visit grandma and pops. Pops is recovering from lung surgery. He had to have a cancerous growth removed. So we had to go to the nursing home that he was temporarily stationed at. He seemed to be doing well but tired. We just visited briefly then headed to grams to open gifts. David and I again got Home Depot cards Score!

After that we called it a night.

Holiday festivities continued on the 23rd. My family came to our place to celebrate. We had my parents, grandparents, and my sister in. They got here around 3pm and we played games and ordered pizza. When David got home from work we ate and then opened gifts (that's our tree above!). My gift from Santa Hiser was my bike trainer. (I am loving it by the way!) I also got the traditional Christmas Eve pjs. Warm fleece pjs with breakfast foods on them :) I have been wearing them to Peak the past two weeks. I think the secretary thinks I am nuts :) David got some cool toys from Brookstone because his real gifts hadn't come yet. My baby sis hooked it up and got us the LOTR extended DVDs. I smell a marathon coming on and not the running sort! Grandma and Grandpa brought us some awesome edible goodies as well as the wonderful gift we can all use, cash! So once again spoiled spoiled spoiled. David picked out my parents gifts this year. He got mom the game Upwards and my dad got an awesome fleece sweater. I picked my sis up a gift card to Claires for some fun new jewelry. Grandma and Grandpa got a gift card to Applebees.

I got David a few gifts this year to cover the separate holiday celebrations. He got two Get Fuzzy compilations, a bunch of warhammer models which I have no clue about, I just got him what he wanted off a list :) For his stocking stuffer I got him the BNL holiday CD and a few crossword puzzle books. David got me Settlers of Catan and a book about running. I got a bunch of toiletries that I was running low on in my stocking :) Oh and also a lighter so I can stop searching for matches every time I want to light a candle.

So after opening gifts we played a few more games and headed to bed. The next morning my sis and I woke up early and ran with my club down in Bedford.

We got back and I was pleasantly surprised to find that my mom and grandma had already started working in the kitchen. I hardly had to do any preparation for that evenings dinner. We played a game of cards then everyone napped while grandma and I chatted and cooked the casserole and ham.

David's parents also came over Christmas Eve so we had 9 for dinner. After dinner we played a round of cards. My family had to head out after that. Hoping to hit the midnight service in Michigan. Davids parents stayed and chatted for a bit then headed to their own church service. After they left David and I hit the basement. I set up my trainer while we watched French Kiss.

Christmas morning we slept in. Once up we slowly got around and I got in 20 minutes on the trainer. After that we headed to grandma and pops for Christmas dinner. It was just us, David's parents, and Grandma and Pops. Dinner was great and we just relaxed most of the evening. I played a few holiday tunes on the piano (only melody line, I am by no means a pianist). After some more chatting we called it a night and headed home. I had taken Friday off so it was back to work for me on the 26th.

Zoom to this past Friday. Rbeuter and Shark drove from Perrysburg for the New Years festivities, and A and her boy toy came over too. We had a delicious dinner, pork chops and pierogies. mmmm. And for dessert Pumpkin Roll.

After dinner we played Turbo Cranium. Someone decided teams would be couples. I think David and I really have an unfair advantage. We just know each other too damn well and our strengths play off each other nicely. So to put it nicely we CRUSHED the competition ;)

I had a lot of fun even though some of the new categories are really strange. For one of them you have to be a "puppeteer" and your partner is the "marionette." From you moving their arms and legs they are supposed to decipher the answer. Tough! I did like the new way of solving gnilleps though (backwards spelling) you get to alternate with your partner... this might be harder with teams of 3 or more.

We sat around and looked through some photo albums. A announced that I looked like an old lady in one of my college photos and "you look A LOT better now!" Thanks :)

After A and her man headed out we all headed to bed.

Saturday morning I met up with my SERC crowd and A and ran in the freezing rain. I think a good time was had by all.

I didn't go out to breakfast afterwards as my husbands birthday is the 31st and he wanted to go out to lunch. Hurried home and David opened his presents from Shark and I. More warhammer stuff :)

Then we got ourselves showered and headed to Chipotle. As you may have read my first Chipotle experience was one not to forget! I held myself back this time and only order 3 sauces. I still got gauc though :) They fit the burrito in one tin foil sheet this time but just barely, there was definitely some seepage. I also only ordered a soda this time around :)

sidenote: do the Chipotle commercials drive anyone else f-ing nuts? I had the stupid manatee one stuck in my head during my Tuesday night run this week. uggh.

We got back from Chipotle and touched base with everyone we were expecting to come over. No one was on the radar yet so David went downstairs to pick a game for us to play. Meanwhile I took care of the previous nights dishes. Part of my "resolutions" this year is to not let the dishes sit around.

So David picked out Samurai Swords or Shogun (just when you thought we couldn't get any nerdier on the game front!). I don't think I had ever played. Lucky for me they set up most of the game while I was doing dishes. This game is sort of similar to Risk I guess. Basically conquer Japan and you win. Well I had no clue what I was doing and just decided to go against my usual grain and play super aggressively. I really bullied Shark and it ended up paying off. In our last predetermined turn I took out his last army and won the game. During the game Eostre and her beau showed up. So once we finished that we pulled out Spellfire and let them get in on the action. My game karma was once again good to me and I was the big Spellfire winner also :) Around this time Pixie and her friend showed. We gave them to tour and perused some photos albums while others played more SpellFire. Davids best friend and his wife showed and we decided to play a group game. Pixie brought inkblots so we gave it a go. This game was HARD! The good thing about it is that you will totally remember everyone's name in the room by the end.

After inkblots we pulled out an American Trivia Game that was EXTREMELY easy and half the answers weren't even correct (we had two history masters in the room to verify with). So yes as the new year was rung in we were all listening intently to Shark read off the extremely obvious trivia. I know I know officially a nerd, I can't help it seriously!

I think the party started to wane a bit but I couldn't really tell you because I spent the next hour trying to locate my cell phone. Sometime between Friday's grocery store trip and midnight on Saturday I had lost my cell phone. Just as I had given up hope my brilliant husband thought to look in his car. I must have dropped it when I moved his car onto the street that morning to head to my run :) Go figure.

A few more games were played and then we headed to bed. We had to do some shifting of aerobeds but everyone managed to fit that was staying.

Sunday morning we slept in a bit. David and Shark started WarHammer before I was even out of bed :)

I made some eggs and Rbeuter kindly kept everyone's coffee cups filled.

The 4 of us not playing warhammer settled into a game of Catan. The longest game of Catan ever I think. We had absolutely no access to Ore so no cities were built the entire game. But in the end the good game karma prevailed and I won. It was definitely a good weekend for me with the games.

After Catan we all got rounded up and headed out on a geocaching adventure. This is basically an online scavenger hunt. The site www.geocaching.com has geocache locations stored by their lat/long. You look them up and print out clues. Then you use a GPS and your brains to find the geocache. Pixie and her friend have been doing this for a while so they printed out two geocache locations for us to look for. We were successful in both searches. It was fun. Another cool hobby to add to my list :)

After geocaching Pixie and her friend had to head out. Shark and David played more Warhammer while Rbeuter and I had some ice cream and read/blogged.

After the warhammer game we all played Catan. I can't remember but I think Shark was victorious. I absolutely sucked. The dice just were not kind to me at all.

It was extremely late by this time so Rbeuter and Shark decided to stay the night again.

Monday morning I woke up late and they were on their way out. After they left we tore down all the holiday decorations and tried to make the house presentable for a visit from my family.

Around 2 my parents and my aunt and uncle got here. My parents brought David's Christmas and Birthday warhammer stuff and they brought me a Turpentine Creek calendar (bonus!). My aunt and uncle brought us a bottle of wine and some gorgeous roses that look absolutely perfect in the dining room.

We gave my aunt and uncle the tour and my uncle let us know how we could fix the leak in the attic!

After the tour we chatted a bit and then it was onto games. I was once again victorious! I am telling you I should have played the lottery this weekend! Everyone helped us out with all the leftover snacks we had lying around. I think we still have some popcorn and some chocolate Hershey pretzels my husband has been hiding from me.

After cards we went out to dinner at red lobster. Everything was divine. We had a good time catching up and I even had left overs for work on Tuesday. David and I came home and called it a night early.

And that kids is what happens when you don't post about your holiday's promptly. If anyone made it through this whole post I am EXTREMELY impressed.