Toadfrogs and Elephants

Finally, the long weekend is here! I can’t really complain, I didn’t go to work on Friday. Wade and I took the day off to look at houses. Daniel drove over from Huntsville and got in just in time for dinner. The three of us realized we hadn’t seen King Kong and decided to go to the 10 o’clock showing. That might not have been the smartest move – it is a three hour movie. We didn’t crawl into bed till about 2 am.

The movie was pretty good. I am curious now to see the original. I loved the dinosaur/gorilla fight scene. In what other movie would you see that? I was also impressed with the range of emotion that was displayed by a non-talking gorilla. However, the movie seemed to have an overabundance of long looks and huge, creepy, crawly bugs. Did I mention the island natives were a little freaky?

Wade and I are now officially house hunting. What fun! Now if we can just decide on which one we like…..

Most of the houses we are looking at are older houses that could use a little updating. The hardest part has been finding a house that has a shop (or a garage that can be used as a shop), but both of these houses have two car garages.

Do you ever just feel a little behind or a little different from everyone else?

As I was unpacking my bags, I discovered lots of forgotten presents. My favorite was the dark chocolate M&Ms that Jenny found for me. I posted about them a while ago – especially how hard they are to find. Thanks Jenny!!

Our final round of Christmas was Christmas night. We always get together with the Upshaws for a snack supper and gifts. This year we were fewer in number – Ben, Stephanie, and their new daughter Liza stayed home in NC. We still had a good time and took the required toadfrogs and elephant picture. I think my mother is trying to convince Wade to insert the missing people – we’ll see how good his photoshopping skills are!

Pictured below: Me, Wade, Jason, Matt, Chris, and Melissa.

Aren’t we cute?

Christmas Day finally arrived! We started the morning with madness at my mom’s house. She was doing the Christmas breakfast for our extended family. (We have oyster stew with the normal breakfast things – weird, huh?) I think about 18 people came. Wade and I snuck off as everyone was eating to join his family for breakfast. Then we went to church and then back to his grandparents’ house for presents. After presents, lunch, naps, and a couple of games of Uno – Santa and his elf even dropped by for a visit….

The last stop for us was my Grandmother’s house. The family has grown considerably in recent years and we now have little ones running around. This was the first year we decided to downsize the gift giving. We drew names, but excluded the grandparents. They still wanted to get everyone a present. My grandmother makes the best macaroni and cheese. I wasn’t really hungry, but I always manage to find room for that and rolls with grandma’s jelly. Yum!