A Very Merry Christmas

Justin and I both had a very amazing Christmas this year! We started off by exchanging one gift from each of us on Christmas Eve right before bed. I opened a beautiful watch that I somehow managed not to get a picture of and Justin opened a book I gave him.



I knew that as soon as he started reading the book he would have more trips planned for us. Shockingly, we have both done many things that are listed in the book. There is a page dedicated to climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa, which is something we plan to do in 2011 along with a safari in the Serengeti for a week (both on my 101 list). After seeing the spread in the book, Justin got all excited and started looking things up for us to climb the mountain. We aren't sure of the exact dates since the guides don't post them that far in advance, but we know that it will consist of us leaving sometime around December 20th and returning after the New Year. So we will be celebrating Christmas and New Years in Africa, which is pretty awesome! The trip is usually completely booked up 8 months in advance so we've already started saving for it. Justin and I are both hoping to convince his dad to come climb the mountain with us. Anyways, I'll talk more about that in a later blog. For now, back to Christmas...

We went to the 11pm service at church on Christmas Eve night and, as tradition, to waffle house afterwards. The "kids" go to the waffle house by the church on Columbiana and the adults go to the waffle house by the Days Inn on Hwy 31. The next morning we woke up and finished exchanging gifts between the two of us.



Justin got me a new Zune. I had an Ipod before, but I like this much better!!



He also got me the collection of the "old school" Christmas movies along with the funniest movie ever made, The Hangover. I didn't take pictures of my gifts to Justin, but they all were related to the jeep.

After opening gifts from eachother we went to the Morris' house to have Christmas.



The Morris Christmas tree.



My awesome stocking that Debbie made me. She's so talented!



Debbie, Gordon, Jennifer and Aeron all opening gifts. And Gizmo was front and center :)

I got so much from the Morris'! Justin and I both got some Alabama and Auburn ornaments from Debbie and from Jennifer. Jenn and Aeron got me some pretty awesome stationary, a 5 ingrediants or less cookbook (perfect for me), and a few other things. Debbie and Gordon got me some new running shoes (well needed since my current ones are about to have to retire before the half-marathon in April), more of our china, gift cards to the movies, TONS of candy, some storage containers for ornaments (also well needed), a few scuba diving toys, and a bunch of other things too. Justin naturally got a TON of stuff for his jeep. It was basically all he wanted for Christmas.



This was one of my favorite things they got me. It's a Diver's Down beach towel for scuba divers. Love it :)

After eating a wonderful lunch at the Morris', we left to take the Giz home and restock the car with gifts for my mom's family.



Me and my awesome hubby in front of my mom's tree!



Anderson was super excited about his Batman ATV from me and Justin. He's all into Batman these days!



My mom gave me a nativity scene which I was NOT expecting. I absolutely LOVE it!!! I was seriously telling Justin on the way to my mom's that next year I needed to buy a nativity because we didn't have one. I had never even mentioned it to my mom. Thanks momma!!!

After leaving my mom's we met back up with Justin's family for their tradition of movie night on Christmas night. We all went to see It's Complicated with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. It was cute, but I expected it to be funnier than it was.

I hope everyone had as awesome of a Christmas as we had. Happy Birthday Jesus!