Kyle and Santa

An 18-year-old makes an idiot of himself for our holiday enjoyment.

Five Christmas celebrations later...

...we are lounging in our Midas-like wealth! Our families have spoiled us this year, and we are lovin' it! To see more of my Christmas pics, look at the album I made on my Yahoo! Photos.

We had Christmas with Jay's brothers and parents first, last Friday night. Great gifts, food, and family time! The next day was spent with Diane's extended family, who traveled to Calera from the Dallas area. The five little boys, aged three to eight, enjoyed farm life, football, and chasing Jay and Uncle Jimmy's golf balls in the pasture.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we started our morning with an unusual Bible class: the electricity was off at church, so we had an impromptu singing in the fellowship hall, where the windows shed enough light to read from our hymnals. The sunlit song service was an unexpected blessing!

That afternoon, Jay and I exchanged our gifts to one another. He surprised me with a beautiful, framed bridal portrait! I requested a framed photo of the two of us from the wedding, but he led me to believe there wasn't time to get that done before Christmas. Jay had a pretty boring Christms from me: some clothes, CDs, aftershave, etc.

That evening, we packed up more gifts and headed to my Dad's house in Pottsboro on Lake Texoma. After dinner, we unwrapped gifts--I got my Dyson!--and Dad, Kyle, Amanda, and Jay played some Hold 'Em. Kyle was losing, so he entertained himself and us by dancing and singing with Dad's five-foot Santa Claus. I'm doing my best to post the video clip of this hilarious show.

After Dad's, we headed out to Coleman to get in our Christmas p.j.'s and take some pictures. I don't have any of these, but Mom got us all OU pajama pants, except Ty, who got a Mr. Incredible outfit. Christmas morning was a bit unusual: we stayed up so late the night before that not even Tyler woke up until 9 a.m.! However, he and Kyle were just as excited as if they'd woken up at 6, like normal. More great gifts: Jay got a king-size Bass Pro gift card, and I got my shows on DVD (Lost and The Office) and tons of cute maternity clothes from my mom and sis.

That afternoon, we went out to Mead to the Shipman/Collins families gathering at Aunt Sheila and Uncle Doug's house. It was great to see the cousins I don't get to see very often, and especially their adorable little boys (Memphis, Noah, Zach, Zeke, and Hudson!).

Today, I'm trying to recover from this sinus thing I've been fighting all weekend, and assimilate all our wealth to our belongings. Tomorrow, it will be the after-Christmas sales, here I come! I've got some Kohl's gift cards that are burning holes in my wallet, and a clearance-priced, full-size, pre-lit Christmas tree with our name written all over it at Target!

Christmas hubbub

Hey all, sorry for the lag in posting. I've been reading blogs, just not posting on mine! One thing that takes up a lot of my Internet time is reading entries and checking out photos on my aunt and uncle's journey in China to adopt a baby girl, Allie! It's very interesting; check it out here.

Other family news is that my mom and brothers will be hosting a foreign exchange student next semester! She's from Italy, her name is Angelica, and she's a senior like Kyle. Mom is trying to figure out how to give her the all-around American experience while being based in Coleman, OK. Any ideas? So far, we've thought about a fun spring break trip, either snow-skiing or NYC, whichever Angelica prefers, a Dallas weekend that includes a viewing of the fab musical Wicked, OKC weekends to see OU sporting events and visit Bricktown, a trip to Fort Washita during its annual Rendezvous days, a farm experience with the Willinghams, and a trip to Indiana for an American wedding (congrats, cousin Caleb and Theresa!).

Meanwhile, Jay and I are bracing ourselves for a fun weekend of Christmas festivities: Friday night with the immediate Mauck family, Saturday at Calera again with Jay's mom's extended family, Sunday evening at my dad's house, and Christmas morning at my mom's house. Can't wait to see all the Pannells a week from Saturday!

All is well with the pregnancy; Little Miss is moving all over the place now! I've gained about eight pounds, which is actually a little less than normal. (When it becomes more than normal, I might be a little more hesitant to share the number!)

Wish List!

If anyone is still shopping for me for Christmas (this would probably only be Hubby), I've added a link to my Amazon wishlist in the sidebar. I never buy myself CDs, so that's what I've put on highest priority on there. Of course, as I said in my previous post, maternity clothes are a big need, as well!

20 weeks bump!

Big difference between this month and last, right? Bending over is getting more difficult, and bumping into things is becoming a problem. Also, maternity clothes are now at the top of my shopping list (along with a few remaining Christmas gifts, of course!). I've got several pairs of pants, but most of my tops aren't long enough to cover the banded top of the maternity pants. I've been rocking quite a few ghetto-fab maternity looks with my non-maternity shirts: tunic-style tanks layered underneath dress shirts, longer tops I tug down on all day, etc. Anyhoo, it's all good, and I'm so excited to be over halfway there!

I know our Christmas tree looks like one a college student would have, and that's because it was! We've been pretty lazy and cheap about the whole full-size Christmas tree thing, but since we're starting a family, I'm going to hit the after-Christmas sales this year to grab one of those pre-lit wonders.

We won!

It was the ultimate battle of Jay's loyalties: his alma mater, OC, versus his graduate alma mater SOSU. OC is where he played the best 3.5 years of basketball of his life, experienced the low point of his young life when he suffered a season-ending knee injury, and came back the next year to achieve the honor of NAIA Player of the Year. At SOSU, he earned his Master's degree and worked as graduate assistant and assistant coach for four years, so that today, his first year's recruits are the senior team leaders. Where do his loyalties lie? Well, he says SOSU's victory last night in Edmond felt like a victory to him, so make of that what you will. OC will always have a special place in his heart, but he has relationships with everyone on the current SOSU squad.

We had a great trip to Edmond last night: I stopped and did a couple hours' Christmas shopping in Norman with my sister, who is fighting through her first semester of finals in OU grad school, while Jay hooked up with some SOSU buddies to eat in Bricktown and get to the gym early. I didn't expect to spend much time with Jay at the Eagles Nest, and I didn't; he seems to know all the OC fans, except the students. I, on the other hand, spent some quality time with Kyle, Audrey and Carson, and Brian, my sister, brothers-in-law and nephew. However, it was a little surreal to watch at least part of an SOSU game sitting beside Jay, something I've never done before! He even got interviewed on the radio during halftime.

Snow days!

Hooray for the unpreparedness of Oklahoma to take care of icy roads! I bet if we lived up north, they'd have crews cleaning the roads up and people putting their snow chains on and going to work like normal. Nope, here, we've got people who drive like crazies on the ice so that the rest of us get to miss work! SOSU closed offices and canceled classes today and half of yesterday, so I've been working like a sled dog on my presentations and projects due next week.

Hubby's actually been hunting in these below-freezing temps!