The Best Christmas EVER........

Now that it is over, it is a time to reflect on the holidays and make sure you made a difference in someones life during the holidays.

Christmas Eve day started out at 5:45am, as we needed to take Jonathan to work so he didn't have a car there. Joel & I did some very last minute shopping. Once home we cleaned up the house, loaded up the car with presents that needed to go back to Minnesota with us and got us ready. Joel left at 2:20 pm to go get Grandma Waage, load up her presents, pickup Breeanna at 3:30 pm and Jonathan at 4:00 pm. Once everone was loaded off to Christmas at Rita's party room with John Young, John, Joanne and Courtney. On our way, we stopped off at Wong's Kitchen to pickup our Christmas dinner. It was nice to see Mom & Papa Wong and Michael as we hadn't seen them in years. With food in hand, off to Rita's we went.
After we had the car unloaded, we sat down to a wonderful Christmas dinner that I didn't have to cook! Rita had the party room all decorated, tables set and a beautiful buffet table all ready to roll......

And then the presents came......... we opened present after present. It took us 2 hours to open all the gifts, which are too many to mention. I think everyone was pleasantly surprised. By now it was 9:00 pm and we needed to think about heading back to the north-woods. After the clean up was completed, cars loaded up, goodbyes said, we headed out for out 2 hour drive.

We arrived back to Chetek about 10:45 pm to drop off Grandma Waage and the rest of us back to our house for our Christmas. It has been a family tradition for many, many years that after festivities, to go back home, put on our Christmas jammies and open our presents. Anybody that knows me, knows that I get joy out of spoiling the heck out of my family when it comes to Christmas........well, this year my family turned the tables on me! My #1 son got his momma a Kindle Fire! My #1 honey got his wifey a WiFi Blue Ray player and a Packer Jersey (Clay Matthews)! Big Joe and Breeanna got me gift certificates for my Kindle. Joel got a whole brew system from Jonathan & I so he can brew his own beer! Big Joe got him some tool that he thought he needed and Breeanna got him a charging system that all you need to do is lay your phone on it. The kids got too much to mention. We finally got done opening presents at 2:15am, quickly threw breakfast into the crockpot and were in bed by 2:30am.......well kinda, I had to get up and make sure that Santa could get into the house to leave his goodies!

Sunday morning everyone slept in until 9:00am. We quickly got up, got ready and went to pickup Grandma Waage for Brunch. After breakfast we opened more presents! I swear my family bought out every store in Rice Lake. We brought Grandma back home around 1:30pm, so we could get the house put back together and get in a quick nap before the Packer game started at 7:20 pm. We got over to Gilligan's around 6:00pm in order to get on the boards and gather our seats. We met a new friend, Jack who is the owner of Crimson Hue, right down the street from us. The Pack won.....da! We went to bed.

Monday was our first chance to sleep in and didn't have a schedule to keep, that is until Grandma Waage called to say she needed trash bags. Seeing we planned on running up to Rice Lake to exchange or return a couple of things, we invited her along. We bummed around to see what kind of after Christmas sales there were, some good, some not so much. After we returned her home, we headed down to Eau Claire to exchange ,my Columbia coat that was the wrong size. While we were down there, we continued to do the after Christmas sales and had a little dinner. We got home about 7:30pm and started to prepare Joel & Big Joe to go back to work the following morning.

Just think Christmas Day last year we were snowmobiling! Not this year.......

This upcoming week is expected to be slow at work for me, which is ok with me as I have a crap load of laundry to do. We had plans for New Year's Eve, but they got canceled, so now I think we are just going to head over to Gilligan's to hang with our new friends. New Year's Day we have a Packer game to watch at Gilligan's. Monday I have a old dear friend from Emmanuel Lutheran days that is coming for lunch with his significant other, that I am totally excited about seeing. Monday afternoon we are returning to Gilligan's to watch the Badgers in the Rose Bowl game. Tuesday evening it is back to Gilligan's for trivia night!........maybe we should just set up shop at Gilligan's because we are going to be there all frickin weekend!!

Check Back Often.......Check Back Soon

Joel, Amy and Jonathan
P.S. I would have included Christmas pictures, but due to circumstances beyond our control.......ok, Joel screwed up! For Christmas we purchased a electronic picture frame for John Young and after Christmas Eve, Joel tried to down load all the pictures onto his frame to find out he needed to leave the sms card in the picture frame! Hence, all the pictures are with John Young!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Top row left to right: Lilly, Charlie Brown and Izzie
Bottom row: Jack, Paris, Oliver and Chica

Correction......

We never got Lacey as a foster.......instead we welcomed into our home, Izzie. She is absolutely the most beautiful red stag we have ever seen. Izzie is a 5 yr old red female, spayed, docked tail and uncropped ears. 12", 12 lb. Shots up-to-date. Owner give-up.
Izzie is a total cuddlebug who absolutely adores people and loves being outside. She enjoys going for walks and afterwards, she'll want to crawl into your lap under a blanket to take a nap. She is housebroken and crate trained. She does great with strangers, small dogs and cats but doesn't do well around large dogs. She's incredibly sweet and affectionate.