A Whole Lot Of Awesome

There IS joy in this holiday season.

Last night Paulius and I went and picked up our eldest son, Frank, and his two boys, Devon and Nicholas, and we all went cruising the cities and towns in our area.
We went to Greenville, Easley, Simpsonville and Fountain Inn. There were several neighborhoods which ran basically on my way to work every night and we cruised thru those on the way to Fountain Inn where my daughter lives now....about a 40 mile trip.
We actually covered about three times that.
There was a lot of back-tracking going on because some of those decorations really deserved a second look.
Nicholas had us all in stitches with his antics.
He LOVES Christmas lights(wonder where he gets THAT from!) and was all "OWWWW! WOW!
PWETTY!!!!!" and "LOOK! PWETTY LIGHTS". Only problem was he had a 10 second delay. So we would look at the lights and get one of those comments about 10 or so seconds AFTER we had passed the display!
Then he got a bit over-stimulated and was giving us the same thing over even a parking lot full of streetlights!
He even did it for a couple of particularly bright lights in the windows of the houses.

When we got down to my daughter, Julie's, house, we unloaded the goodies and went in. She and Eddie did a fantastic job on their house and grounds this year! She had everything done up in red and silver in honor of her brother, Clay, (He was a Christmas fanatic as well and red and silver was his favorite color. He even had a Red sleigh(His Toyota Matrix) he rode around in.)
It was beautiful!

I had made her a pecan pie(all from scratch) for her birthday in place of a B-day cake. And I also had made a chicken-pepperoni pizza(again from scratch) for the adults and we had stopped at the local pizza place to grab a plain cheese pizza for the kids...all 6 grandsons of mine-T. J., Devon, Austin, Justin, Christopher, and Nicholas! It was all they would eat...take after me they do- I like my pizza either with everything piled on it or with nothing but cheese. I have no preference for either- I like em both equally.
Anyway, we ate the pizza but the pecan pie stayed strictly Julies.
We all watched Polar Express while we visited and altho it wasn't a long visit, it was a LOT of fun creating more memories.

Julie had written Santa and he had sent all the boys a personalized letter from the North Pole! Seems he had looked at his Naughty and Nice List- and lo and behold he had found every single one of their names on the NICE side! So they were thrilled to get a letter from Santa saying he would be visiting their house on Christmas Eve with lots of goodies!!!!

(Personally I think the jolly old elf needs new glasses-I mean after all, I have been AWESOMELY Super Dooper Good this year and the old fart didn't write ME a letter saying MY name was on his Nice list! Obviously a mistake has been made somewhere!!!!)

We had a wonderful time!!!
We stopped back by my moms house and then we stopped back at our house(mine and Paulius') and they saw my tree and Christmas village. Santa had left some stuff under my tree while I was gone too and Devon was trying to figure out why Santa had left stuff at my house early!
I told him I was old and he knew I wouldn't peek so he was allowed to bring stuff to my house a bit early...(which we all know is a complete and utter LIE cause I DO peek...and unwrap....and wear......and re-wrap the empty box and put it back under the tree so no one KNOWS I have peeked.) But I digress.

Marie even kinda got to participate because Frank had brought her cell-phone which has pic-taking capabilities and he took ODDLES of pics for her- and he was taking to her almost the entire time and so she could hear Nicholas Owwwww-ing and Ahhhhhhh-ing over everything.
It still wasn't the same without her there, tho.
I told him that next year we are all going to pitch in and rent a big van or a short bus(no jokes PLEASE) and we were all loading up and taking a trip to McAddenville to see the lights. It's a long trip yes, but the entire town is lit- it takes about an hour to drive thru it and we always stop at Chili's Restaurant and have dinner on the way back home. It's a mini Family vacation. And it's totally tradition.

The only thing I forgot this year was the Manhiem Steamroller Christmas tape we always listen to when we go "light-seeing". Oh well. And we TOTALLY missed Tiny Town this trip. They closed up at 11PM and we missed it by MINUTES! Luckily, T/T is about a block and a half from our house so we can see it any day...night, I mean.

Anyway, I'm all about relaxing this weekend. All my decorating is done now, my gift buying is finished, my wrapping is also finished. All I have left to do is make a couple of food-gifts a day or so before Christmas and it's DONE-DONE-DONE!

Today I'm going to sit around and watch TV and do a whole lot of nothing. I do need to at some point go get some bathroom supplies, but I can do that whenever I want. I'm working not a BIT this weekend. Not at my job- not at home- Not ANYWHERE!!!!

Christmas music, hot cocoa with mini-marshmallows, and Christmas lights are my agenda.

Hopefully I'll be posting some of my Christmas decorating pics on here in a day or two........

Happy Holidays!!!!!