Christmas Vacation Recap

Well, the boys are back to school today. I'm quite sad to see the holidays end, Howard was home for the whole 2 weeks, and what a treat that was! We had a blast! It all started with getting our brand new lazy boy sectional sofa and king size bed delivered, and then on the Dec 22nd Howard and I installed our new wood flooring in the basement. I was quite impressed as it only took us 11hours to have it all finished! We still have trim and doors to do downstairs, but that will come later when I can paint them in the garage. Its too cold right now to paint them out there! Needless to say we have been enjoying super mario bros for the wii and movie nights in the new t.v./playroom :)
We also hosted a appetizer social on the 23rd after our Christmas Eve service at church (our church holds 3 Christmas Eve services one on the 23rd and two on the 24th) I believe we had about 25 people in attendance and stayed up to the wee hours of the morning, we had a great time visiting with everyone!
Christmas Eve we spent at home and then we had a beautiful dinner at some dear friends house. Of course we had to head home early as Howard and I had our "santa"duties to fufill :) After the stockings were stuffed and presents placed under the tree, we headed off to bed. Christmas morning came all too quickly ;) We had a beautiful Christmas day, spent in our PJ's playing with our new toys and finished with a delish fresh turkey dinner!
Howard and I decided this year that the kids have too much "stuff" so we opted to give them activities for Christmas, Nathan starts private swim lessons today, Josh had snowboard lessons over the holiday and Riley starts ballet next week. They were all very excited about their new activities and of course still received many "awesome" toys :)
New Years Eve came all too quickly with the cleaning, organizing and relaxing we were doing! We celebrated with some friends and now its back to the regular routine!
I have been going over some goals in my head for the new year. In the forefront is exercising alot more and returning to our Clean Eating plan, that somehow got lost over the holidays! Also finishing up a bible study I started in Sept and starting a new one. And of course traveling to China to bring home our sweet baby girl!
I hope to find some things to keep me busy,to help get through the rest of the winter as we usually don't see the snow go away until April.
I know I read a few blogs of people still waiting for referrals of their babies and how they were sad and felt as if someone was missing. I feel for those families and can only imagine how hard it is having waited 3+ years! I however decided in advance that I would celebrate and enjoy hopefully our last Christmas as a family of five. Addie was close in our thoughts and prayers throughout the holiday, but we all really enjoyed this Christmas and I would venture to say that this was the best Christmas ever for our family! We had 2weeks dedicated to just family time.
Last night Howard and I watched "The Blind Side" with Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw, it was awesome! Both Howard and I really enjoyed the movie, I would say its a must see! I loved how it portrayed adoption and how it showed how the family was blessed by having adopted "Big Mike" and how much joy he brought into their lives, not how it was only a blessing for him by being adopted by this family!
Well I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas vacation, and feel rested and ready to start the new year with finesse!