Santa Claus Came to Town

This is my favorite part of my house. My

nativity scene my grandmother made and

my handmade garland. It's just beautiful.

Christmas this year was a bit different from other years. For one, my family came in for Thanksgiving instead of the usual Christmas visit. Two, Josh and I both work in restaurants so unfortunately for us we had to work on Christmas night. But nonetheless, it was still a very nice Christmas season. The week of Christmas started out with my work Christmas party. We all met up and car pooled out to the owner/ boss' house for lunch and our present exchange. We all brought one present to be exchanged in the dirty Santa game (or Chinese Christmas) and then we all got presents from Scottie (owner, a.k.a. Momma) and Scott (the floor manager) and Curtis (kitchen help/door guy). And boy did we all walk out of there with a loot...I received a very nice dart board for my porch in the present exchange, from Momma I got a new coat and new dishes for my kitchen; and from Scott and Curtis we got handmade water fountains for in our homes (unfortunately for me, I can't figure out how to put it together). After that we all had the night off so we went bar hopping and just had a good ole time with each other. Tons of pictures, tons of laughs, and tons of memories; I couldn't have asked for anything better. The crazy bunch that I spend most of my time with.

Never a dull moment.

My beautiful house all lit up. I'm in love.

Then on Christmas Eve, Josh and I loaded up his car with presents and Lola and headed to my parents house. Since we had to work Christmas day, we decided to have our big dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Day. It was a delicious dinner of champagne basted ham, mashed potatoes, candied carrots, green bean casserole, homemade rolls, and for dessert homemade apple pie. Then we went to the candlelight service at church, headed home and went to bed so Santa could visit. Christmas morning was started off with our annual Christmas breakfast casserole and hashbrown casserole. Then we opened presents and before we knew it, it was time to load up the car again and head home to get ready for work. Even though it was a sorta rushed Christmas I still enjoyed every minute of it!

Christmas morning at my parents'.

Prayers Needed

After I joyfully told the news of a baby on its way to join my family, I must now mournfully tell of its loss. Chris and Kittie discovered a few weeks back that there might be something wrong with the baby. What the doctor had told them was that the neck of the baby was growing too fast, which can usually be a sign of either a deformity or down syndrome. So, the scheduled another appointment so that tests could be taken. It wasn't until this past Monday that they found out something; which by that point in time Kittie had already started to bleed some. The doctor told them that what happened was the the fetus was probably trying to correct the mutation of genes and in the process aborted itself. And the tests came back positive that there definitely would have been some type of deformity with it. Good news is though that the doctor saw no reason why Chris and Kittie would not be able to try again and have a perfectly healthy pregnancy and baby. So that's the story, and please keep the two of them in your thoughts through this difficult time.

November

Since Josh and I have been together we usually go to his parents' house in Helen, GA for Thanksgiving. However, this year we did not for two reason: 1. our work schedules would not allow for enough time to actually enjoy being there and 2. my whole family came in town to spend Thanksgiving at my parents house. I felt really selfish wanting to spend Thanksgiving at my parents house just because we would also be spending Christmas with them as well. Which meant to holiday time with the O'Dells. Thankfully though his parents are very understanding about our crazy work hours and the fact that my family would be here, so we promised to catch up another time. So, all 8 of us (Mom, Dad, Nana, Poppop, Chris, his girlfriend Kittie, Josh, and myself) gathered around the dinig room table for a delicious meal of turkey and dressing, green been caserole, holiday vegetables, cranberry sauce, harvard beets, creamed corn, and of course the Landis family homemade rolls. After gorging ourselves in this wonderful meal my mom spent hours preparing we finished it up with of course a couple of naps and then coconut cream pie and pumpkin pie. It was a great day spent with my family, unfortunately it was the only day Josh and I got to spend with them because we had to go straight back to work the next day and everyone else had to be heading back to their homes. But at least we got that one day. And the best part of it all...yes there is still a best part.I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNT!!!! Chris and Kittie are expecting a baby in June 2010!

Let's rewind to October....

WOW!!! I am really not good at the blogging thing, but I PINKY PROMISE I will get better. OKay, so with that said...where do I begin?? hmm..let's go back to OCTOBER...

Really there are only a couple of things that happened in October that I want to share. One would of course be Halloween. It was our first Halloween in our house and of course I decorated. Here is our house all spookified.

I ended up having some headstones in the garden in front of the house, but of course never got around to taking a picture of it and we also had a skeleton tree...it was supposed to glow in the dark but I never saw any spooky glowing skeletons...go figure.
The other thing that I was super excited about in October was that Josh took me to see Finding Nemo on Ice. I was soooo excited. here are a few pics to recap on that (p.s. we were the only couple there without children...cause we're cool like that)


And last, but certainly not least would be the Big Chill's annual Halloween Party. We had a huge party on Halloween night with a DJ and a costume contest. It was tons of fun and everyone, even us servers were dressed up. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the night.


The top one is of Anna, Kim, Scottie, and myself. Then just Anna and myself. And the last one is just a glimpse of how packed it was that night. This picture is just of one side of the restaurant and probably half the dance floor. Yeah, it was busy that night; again, tons of fun and of course we had a party of our own after it was all said and done and that of course was loads of fun as well.