Christmas & A Birthday

Thanks to both of us recently joining facebook our poor little blog has been abandoned which is why we're writing a "catch up" post. I know what a sad time to neglect our blog. For Christmas we ended up spending Christmas Eve with Shane's family. We had a yummy dinner filled with lots of finger foods like cocktail shrimp, bean dip, sandwich wraps, cheese dip, potato and cheese puffs, battered and fried mushrooms and many other things. We joked around and looked at the Glenn Beck website where we watched the Ramahana kwanzmas video. Then they reinacted the Nativity Scene where we thought Brody would be the logical choice for Baby Jesus but instead Shane's 4 year old sister Malea insisted on changing her usual Mary role to Baby Jesus. It didn't matter to us though. After that we read the Three Trees and called it a night. We went home and spent some time with my parents, Amber & Devin, and Alisha & Dave. When they all decided to call it a night we played some rock band and then I fell asleep on the couch with Brody. Shane was up until 2:30 in the morning because he had taken some excedrin at his parents house and was in no way ready to fall asleep. We finally made it to bed with Brody happily sleeping between us until he got hungry and insisted he get his rice cereal at 8:00 in the morning. Once we were awake we decided to open presents before Brody took his usual 9:00 nap. Brody got clothes, a walker/wagon toy, books, a snowsuit, some other toys, a crib, and baby food. Shane got a movie, a belt with horses on it, a wallet, hot chocolate, and other cool stuff. I got a jewelry amoir, an 11/14 portrait of our family, some vanilla wafer sticks, and other fun stuff. Brody had fun playing with the paper on the presents and didn't want to let go of the kitchen toys Shane's family gave him. He barely made it to the end of opening gifts before he started to get ornery and was laid down for a nap. His nap didn't last long and he was in his walker playing with his new toys having the time of his life. We spent some time with my side of the family and had to wait for Brody to take a longest nap ever for the first time in his new crib. We actually had to wake him up after at least an hour. Thats the longest he's slept by himself after someone has put him down for a nap. We got him ready and went out to spend some time with Shane's side of the family and visit his grandparents. They had a party with pizza and other food. We visited and enjoyed one anothers company. The rest of the day and Friday are blurry to me. Basically we spent time with family. Saturday Shane's sister Kara did my hair and I love it. It is totally different but I've been waiting for a good day to take a picture and I also keep forgetting. It will give me a reason to make another post. We were going to go to a movie but they picked a time that was 15 minutes sooner than we could get there and by the time we got to the theater it was alreadh 30 minutes into the movie. We decided to go on a date since Brody was being babysat and ended up at Wingers instead. When we finished eating we ran home, grabbed some stuff, and went to Wal-Mart for a little bit. We then picked up Brody and went home. We had steak and shrimp for dinner and everything was yummy.

This is the Christmas calendar that Brody was only allowed to put the ornaments up on. If you look closely most of them are extremely crooked.

For New Years we went out to Shane's cousin's house and partied. They had food and we visited and played games. I was really nervous because there were nerf darts flying everywhere and I thought Brody was going to get shot in the face. Luckily he didn't and we got to ring in the new year by watching the ball drop. New Years Day we went to Yes Man with some friends and played games. I didn't have to babysit most the Christmas break so I spent time with Brody and my parents while Shane worked every day that wasn't Saturday, Sunday, or a holiday.
Yesterday Shane celebrated another great year of his life. We had dinner at his parents house where we had mud cake (crumpled up chocolate cake and chocolate pudding with whipped cream, m&m minis, and gummy worms) and ice cream. After that we had cake and ice cream at our house with one of Shane's good friends and his wife. I made him a funfetti bundt cake with white icing (snow) and teddy grahams on gum sticks as snowboards and sleds. There were also teddy grahams having a snow fight and some were even making snow angels. I got my inspiration from the beach cake where you put blue icing on it and have teddy grahams on life savers as tubes and a gum stick diving board into the hole at the center of the cake. It was a fun last hurrah for the winter break then sadly school started and we weren't ready for our break to be over. Shane discovered today that for all the books he needs for his classes are going to cost $750 and the stupid bookstore has only new books. I swear they have a conspiracy to get new books every semester. Most of Shane's books he's had to buy throughout his schooling career have been brand new books. After this semester we're going to try half.com. I'm only taking one class and it is a photography lighting class. It should be fun to take a class since I had last semester off. Well that pretty much sums up our lives up to this day.