A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

is what we all had the past few weeks. SR and I have been on vacation for 11 day and the kids just shy of three weeks!
We started our Christmas holiday by visiting SR’s parents, sister (and family) for a few days!  We had a very relaxing time and just spent time together!

We traveled back 2-hours to spend Christmas Eve and Day at our house!  We had homemade Christmas Eve calzones and went to a Christmas Eve mass at a local Monastery.  It was a pretty cool experience.  We all got to open one gift before watching A Christmas Story, a family tradition.  Oh, and early in the day we watched Christmas Vacation on VHS, can you believe that? This was my first Christmas eve stuffing the kid’s stockings and setting out their gifts from Santa.
Christmas morning I was wide awake at 630am, so I started to clean up the kitchen and get things ready for breakfast! SR received a camping gas grill so we all had homemade omelets for breakfast and hot chocolate.  Evie woke the kids up and we all started to open gifts!  I was COMPLETELY spoiled, as were the kids and SR.  We were able to try out one  of my new gifts on our drive down to FL.  I have a tendency of getting lost so I received a car Garmin to help me get around!  The kids got me a new iPod Nano, as my original iPod was on it’s last leg.  In addition, I’m excited to try our my new Garmin Forerunner 301 for my training – this me great for some of my new year’s resolutions!  Both kids got new laptops and SR was blessed with lots of fun, new camera and kitchen supplies! The best part about it, is we paid cash for it all!

We left the day after Christmas to my parent’s house and stayed through this past weekend! We got there just in time for me to spend a little time with my brother, Mike and for my family to meet him.  The earliest I ever got up on vacation was 4am to take my brother to the airport in Orlando.  We celebrated my birthday while there and also had a post-Christmas gathering with my family! I was able to see my brother and his family, as well as many other friends!  AR, mom and I went shopping one day, and Heidi, AR and I went looking for wedding dress shoes another morning!

The past few days we’ve been loafing around and did our once a month big grocery trip!

I have a few new year’s goals.

1. Drop a few pounds and tone up before the wedding (5 months and counting).  SR and I are working together on this! We both weighed (and measured) in today and I’m going to try to track what I eat online through fit day.
2.  My blogger friend Kewl is back after a long time away from the bloglines.  We referred us all to this bible in a year resource. So I signed up too! It’s cool to get the daily readings to your email!

3.  St. Anthony’s Triathlon is in April, so my training in starting tomorrow.  The training overall won’t be that bad, just getting into the moderately warm pool each day will be the  kicker!  We’re experiencing extremely low temps lately so I’m not excited to be cool any further!

4. Planning a wedding.  We’re on track with the planning and I ordered the invitations last week.  I have about a month before the next phase.  I’ve been having lots of crazy dreams regarding our wedding.  Last night, one groomsman arrived in a purple tuxedo, and another in a red.  Last week, my wedding dressed arrived the day of the wedding, but in lilac!!

5.  Blog, blog, blog! I have not been very good about blogging lately. I love to do it, just can’t seem to find the time!  I want to blog more about family stuff, training and every once in a while something that’s tugging on my heart and mind.  SR is also starting a cooking blog, so I am going to help him with getting the content for that together!

That’s a start to the list of 2008 goals.  2007 was a humbling, yet amazing year.  I am looking forward to 2008 and looking forward to all the wonderful things in store! May this year be your BEST year!

Love and hugs, CP

**check out the new pictures in my gallery.