The New Year

Okay, so I've been getting things ready for this year. It's going to be a good one... things are getting settled with the ex... I am going into training to do something a little different... and looking forward to the publishing of my first book!  Oh, I lost my hard drive and lost all that I'd done on it, but I have been working steadily on it and it is almost finished...again... and yes, I saved it to a thumb drive this time! The cool thing is that I think it's better now than it was before... Same idea, same concept, same plot, better characters and character development... more depth and meaning behind the storyline...

I've been following Dyanne's blog for some time and she's now got a second one that is for pictures... her goal is one a day to document the year 2011. I think it's cool, so I am also going to try that, but my goal is only 2 or 3 pics a week... if I do one every day it will be a treat!

I am, however, going to start with some of the pictures taken over the Christmas Holidays... We spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day with my Aunt and Uncle, family and cousins, etc.... It was great fun!



Abbi on Christmas Eve in her new Pj's! She is really happy that she had new Pj's as her others were REALLY small for her!



This is the healthy snack we put out for Santa, most of us were Diabetics so he wasn't getting anything we couldn't have!  Abbi and Aunt Donna had fun figuring it out..



Aunt Donna and Uncle John in front of the tree with the mountain of presents under and around the tree behind them. It was fun opening them all as there were all Brian's kids, Abbi, Chrissy, etc, etc.



Abbi opening the one present she'd asked consistently of Santa, Brian is helping her.  My cousin, Dave, is going to give her lessons a couple of times a month. She was so excited she wandered the house the rest of the day strumming on it.... no chords so was rather annoying, but we just lived with it as she was soooo happy!



Brian got practical things for Christmas, he kept borrowing his mother's scissors so he got scissors for Christmas... he was thrilled!



The preparations for Christmas dinner were done the day before and were ready to go when the time came... all the pots are full of veges, potatoes, etc. saved tons of time on Christmas Day but we had trouble finding enough pots the right size for everything.  The big one in the background is the potatoe pot and it was FULL! 



Aunt Donna preparing the Turkey, she stuffed the cavities of the bird and then just because we had so much of it, she stuffed under the skin as well, then made a packet of dressing on top of it. 



Dinner prep, we fed 22 people and despite the fact that we thought we'd made WAY too much food, there was very little leftovers afterwards. Only enough for one or two people to have a plate... This included the big pot of potatoes too!

  A good time was had by all those that were there, and it was awesome to see and visit family that I hadn't seen in a lot of years! Abbi had a blast with her cousins and made a huge mess in our bedroom playing with them, but we had previously removed everything we thought would or could get broken... We visited, we ate, we had a good time!  All in all, an awesome Christmas!