Last Day

Today is my last official day of work before the holiday! My workplace is gracious enough to give us Christmas Eve off in addition to Christmas Day. But because Christmas Eve is on a Sunday, we get the Tuesday after Christmas off as well. SOOOO...a nice, long 4-day weekend is in store for my honey and me.

Here's the basic plan: tonight, we pack. And sleep. And enjoy that freedom feeling that you always get when you are right at the start of a long weekend and there is very little left to do. (I made our final trip to Walmart this morning at 6:30 AM in order to save my sanity tonight and avoid the crowd). Tomorrow morning we will rise, eat breakfast and hit the road towards West Virginia. We'll probably stop and try to see some people along the way (Tiffany, Steph - any plans tomorrow around noon or so???). Then off to my sister-in-law's home. We'll spend the afternoon there, and then I'm going to try to talk everyone into heading out to On the Border for some good pretend-mexican food. We might also stop by my mother-in-law's home and help her get ready for the party that she is hosting tomorrow. No need for her to do it all on her own when we can pitch in and help out! Saturday night will be spent in a hotel...

Sunday morning will come and we'll head over to my sister-in-law's early for Christmas Eve morning with Kelly's nephew. I'm a little sad that we won't be there first thing - for the last couple of years, Josh and I have gotten up really early together (my favorite time for any Christmas celebration). But Josh is a teenager now, and I'm not sure that he's still into it. Remember when you grew out of it? (I don't remember, because I never did...LOL!). After that, I hope to spend some quality time with Kelly's grandparents, and again offer our assistant to Kelly's mom getting ready for the party.

After the party (think lots of family and pizza!!!), we'll be headed home. Christmas Eve will find us sitting by our tree (wishing we could drink LOTS of red wine) and trying to wait till Christmas morning to open presents. We'll probably end up in bed early...and up again early on Christmas morning. After the round of phone calls to my family, we'll spend the rest of the day hanging out in our PJ's and enjoying the gifts that Santa brought. Hopefully a couple of our neighboors will stop by. I'm going to make a small dinner of sorts for us.

It will be a quiet, peaceful and relaxing holiday.

Let me be the first to say that I CAN NOT wait until we have little kids running around. The only reason that I would ever brave a third pregnancy would be to have more children running around on Christmas morning (among other things). We are going to create so many traditions and memories around the holidays. There is so much that I am going to do during this time of the year. I can't wait.

So...we'll enjoy this last year as childless people. Next year...let the games begin!