We Wish You a Merry Nap. Oh wait, that's my wish...

Goodness, I feel like I never get to sit down these days! With work and kids and Christmas and freak ice storms and volunteering to stand outside in 25 degree weather while it sleets and snows to take pictures of kids with Santa in a state park and exchanging tacky gifts with my very strange but entirely loveable family I don't have time to post! Trust me, once tomorrow comes and goes y'all are gonna get so sick of me posting you'll be enrolling me in college again.

Yesterday we headed off to Branson, MO, to Silver Dollar City and saw Santa and a gigantic Christmas tree that plays Mannheim Steamroller and drank wassail and hot chocolate and yelled at the kids.......no, I did not take any pictures. However, I will share with you some pictures from the last few weeks. It's the least I can do considering I've been horribly absent.

First some pics of our yard post-ice storm:

Leaning Pine.

That's our new Native American name.

Pretty gnarly looking pile of icy limbs eh? Yeah, there were about 25 more piles just like that one alllllllll around our yard.

I took this one through the kitchen window because Paul wouldn't let me in the backyard. This particular tree is the one that fell on the trampoline and didn't destroy it. All I can hope for is a tornado now. Every time the wind blows I pray it takes that dang trampoline into the nearest barbed wire fence, but for some reason God thinks that trampoline needs to stay right where it is.....

I will never, for as long as I live, forget the sound the sounds of the trees as they broke.

Shudder.

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We had our Festivus celebration Friday night with Mom's side of the family. Those of you who read here frequently or know any of us in person are fully aware that we are a sick, twisted lot. The exchange of tacky gifts is not taken lightly and is a contest not for the faint of heart.

The winner this year was the blow-up sheep and bottle of lube brought by my cousin Chad. If that doesn't give you a clue as to what we're like, nothing will.

If it hadn't been for the dang ho sheep, my tampon Christmas angels would've won. The look on Courtney's face when she realized they were tampons was totally priceless.

No, that's not the look. This was after she dropped them like they were on fire and had come to grips with the fact that she now owns four ornaments made from feminine hygiene products.

Cousin Alyssa with her hideous lamp, comliments of my mother.

Chad with the sheep that won him the plaque for the year. She's a purty one, that ewe.

This would be my uncle, the state representative, sporting his extreme makeover kit.

Also notice the Festivus pole. That was a new addition this year. I must say, I liked the ficus variation, but the pole is nice in its own right, I guess.

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Tonight was Christmas with at Mom's with Tater, the kids and Uncle David. Mom gave me my coat (that I knew about and had asked for) a day early because after standing outside Saturday night in the wind, sleet and snow without a coat, I decided I didn't want to walk around Silver Dollar City without one. (If it hadn't been for DeLisa I'd have died of hypothermia, no doubt. That precious woman literally gave me the coat off her back. I heart her.) I haven't owned a coat in years because I've been warm-natured, for one thing, and for another, Oklahoma winters in the past few years haven't been all that bad, but strangely enough, this year I'm so dang cold-natured I stay bundled up all the time and 2007 has been a year of ice. It was time to get a coat. She also gave me a really nice jacket tonight that I didn't know about, so now there is no reason for me to be cold. Top it all off with a $50 Bath and Body Works gift card AND a bag full of B&BW stuff (including glitter spray that has made my cleavage OH so sparkly tonight), a crock pot, earrings, my very own tools which are, of course, PINK, two new bed pillows that are thicker than a bologna sandwich which is how thick the ones we've been sleeping on are, and a bag of candy and other goodies that caused me to exclaim as I opened the bag, "OH MY GOSH, it's a diabetic coma!"

I *heart* Christmas.

I went to bed at 3:30 this morning and got up at 7, Paul and I still have a Polly Pocket jet to assemble and forty gazillion other gifts to set out and I've still got four loads of laundry to finish, so I'm going to leave you all with this.....

Merry Christmas from the Hoovers!