1,057 miles, five trips back and forth and back again.

I realize that it's 18 minutes before the new year so I should be posting about, oh wait, yes, the new year, but I still have too much to cover for the Christmas holiday. I figure that a long wordy post would just be boring, so I'll sum up our holiday with pictures interspersed with long wordy explanations.

We played a lot of Wii over the holiday, including my dad kicking everyone's tail at bowling, my mom trying to beat Nathan at boxing, using it to entertain the small cousins at the Neinast Christmas, and eventually, laughing as me and my parents tried to succeed at the Wii Fit (a perfect Christmas gift from my in-laws!) The Wii is such great fun, and it was totally worth every bit of money Cody and I spent on it.

We left Saturday the 20th, drove to Hereford till Monday, went to Littlefield on Monday afternoon, celebrated Christmas Eve with Cody's family, left late that night to come back to Hereford for Christmas day. Christmas day found us sleeping in till 8 (really late compared to my normal 6:00 that I usually wake everyone up at!!) Our tradition is that the kids wait in my parents room until they announce that its ok, then we run down the hall (usually in an animated fashion, as you see below) and into the living room to see what Santa brought. Yes, I still believe, and he keeps coming. Good enough for me!

Cody obviously fit right in with our over-zealous running down the halls.

After stockings then we take pictures in front of the tree, so we fully enjoy and remember the beauty of the tree. I am wearing a necklace and rainboots that were in my stocking, that's why I look so stylish.

Christmas is always full of fun ways to deliver Christmas messages. One year I got a page of sheet music that my parents had composed. When I played it on the piano, I eventually figured out the tune was "These Boots Were Made for Walkin" and then I got an awesome pair of boots. We do this because I am a sneaky one at figuring out what is in the box and its a good way to trick me. Here I am reading a letter I got with a polka dotted compact mirror and a letter:

The letter said:
Abby, With this little mirror you can see your smile, but a hottie like you need to check out her style! So if to the cedar closet your hubby will go, you can now admire yourself from head to toe!!!

And this picture below is me telling Cody to go get my new full length mirror from the closet! Only Cody didn't know which closet was the cedar closet. It was really funny. And my parents knew the perfect gift for me! I'm been managing with a small "full length" mirror from Walmart, but my new one is a full 5 and a half feet tall so I can fully enjoy my style!

We always have sentimental gifts to, so there has to be lots of crying. Here is my mom after opening up a small wedding scrapbook I made for her.

But the biggest surprise of this Christmas was the way we fooled my dad. Back before the Black Friday deals I called my mom and told her that it would be great if my mom, brother and I all went in together to get my dad a flat screen tv. He has been dying to get one for ages, and Christmas would be a perfect time to surprise him.

Basically, my mom got my dad to believe that the three of us were going in together to by him a SkyeCaddy, a golf gps thing. He actually bought the gizmo with his own golf credit that he had at the golf pro shop and gave it to my mom so she could wrap it and us give it to him on Christmas morning. Nathan had written this nice story to go along with the gift that lead my dad to believe that it was a SkyeCaddy, and my dad thought he put on an amazing performance acting so surprised at his perfect gift.

But the biggest surprise of all was when he opened the box, and instead of a SkyeCaddy coming out, a remote control came out. As you can see below, first he was confused.

And then all of a sudden, it hit him.

And the surprise was everything we hoped it would be!

We all got a lot of laughs as we shared how we surprised him. And then we throughly enjoyed the new HDTV over the rest of the break. Although our sponsor just hung around over the break.

For the afternoon, we headed over to my grandparents house for Christmas with everyone on my mom's side. There are 5 great grandchildren, and they had a pretty fun toy.

All of the little boys got Texas Tech uniforms. They loved them, and it was really cute to see how they were all so excited that they got to share the number 7.

But the surprises weren't over for this Christmas. Our grandparents gave us all money for Christmas, which we expected, but there was a surprise question tagged along with it:
(Click to enlarge the picture and fully enjoy its cuteness!)

We also had a game to play for a chance to win even more money, but the end resulted in the announcement to save the date for June 2009! We're headed to the beach again for another family vacation! Seriously, none of us could believe that we're blessed enough to get another trip together, and thankfully this time we have 2 new members of the family for everyone to get to know! We voted on where we're going and our waiting to hear the results. Speculation was leaning towards Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic... but either way Cody and I are there, we're not picky!

So that about sums up our Christmas break. Eventually I will focus on a happy new year post, but not tonight! Hope you had a great holiday!