Christmas Weekend

On a totally unrelated off note - look what I found at the Big Lots right next to my house? My favorite brand of Cheese Puffs! They had them in my home town growing up but then when I went back a few times ago, they were gone! I have been wondering where to find them. I had never really looked at Big Lots food section before but I was trying to find something else and there they were with a new look...still the same great taste! My sisters will make fun of me for this!

I love these, and actually other brands can be okay too but I hate Cheetos brand...the most popular brand is the one that sucks the most! Glad I know where to get these for now!

This is our door of Christmas cards. Thanks to everyone that sent them our way, they are a joy to get in the mail. I actually got a couple more after taking this picture. We got some wonderful gifts this year and we had a great Christmas weekend. My sister Kira came down earlier to spend Christmas with my other sister Connie and her family. She spent Christmas Eve helping me clean my house because I had been baking the past two days. Kira made ornaments for my boys of their first initial out of wood last year. Kira refinishes wood furniture and can basically make or do anything. I was so excited when she gave me two more ornaments, an "S" for Sharrid and an "L" for Lexie! Now everyone in the family has one of these really neat ornaments from her. They are kind of distressed and stained different colors. Next year she's going to have to give me an "A" for Amar'e!

Christmas morning we had our own little Christmas and then got ready and headed over to Connie's for our Christmas Breakfast. It was a tradition growing up with me and my cousins so I'm glad we are doing it for my kids and their cousins a generation later. The breakfast was awesome! We had home made hash browns, bacon, eggs, orange juice, and fake cinnamon rolls (monkey bread). Afterwards we hung around, played games and waited for the rest of the family to show up. We were getting discouraged when they told us they were in Kingman when they really only had about an hour left or so... Needless to say we were ecstatic to see them when we opened the door! We then had dinner and our gift exchange. It's always like a second Christmas! Connie and I gave everyone all of the home videos my parents have captured over the years of us growing up. It was really fun to watch those tapes that we'd never seen before and relive all of that.

On Sunday we all went to church and then had a big Ham dinner together. One of the highlights of the weekend was sitting down at the piano with mom while she played through the Muse Resistance piano book! It is one of my all time favorite albums and I was in heaven to hear mom play it all on the piano. She's so good to just sit down and sight read that stuff! I sang along the words I knew. That book is now a prized possession of mine! That was one of the highlights of my weekend.

We were all sitting around the table and candidly started making up a game where someone chose a musical group/band/artist and we all went around the table and said our favorite song from them. We did all kinds of artists like James Taylor, Michael Jackson, Bee Gees, Taylor Swift, Eric Clapton, and a lot more! It was so fun to hear what every one's favorite songs were. A lot of us had the same answers. We all have a lot in common musically I guess growing up the way we did. It was funny when a couple people had the same song and everyone else thought it was pretty lame. It was also fun when people would predict what others said before they gave their answer. Everyone had me pretty spot on when they did that! That was a really fun thing to do with my whole family because we're so musical.

On Monday we all got ready and met up for Pizza at NYPD. It was really good pizza and another great time together. While we were there, Connie and Michaela told us all that they had matched each family member to a Star Wars character based on personality! My family does this stuff all the time. It was so funny to hear who everyone was, and it was so true! Everyone was a main character and then they would tell us why. I kept laughing through the explanations cause it was so true! Dad is Lando. Mom is Yoda. Connie is Leah. Kira is Han Solo. I am C-3PO. Michaela is R2D2. Tibi is Chewbacca. Landon is Luke. It was so funny to hear the reasoning behind each pick! After the Pizza party, everyone had to leave. I can't wait til we're all back together again. We are a really close knit family and I know we were meant to be together. Hopefully this summer we can all be together again.