Very Fun-(and food)-Filled Holidays!!

Okay, so I know the holidays were like a month ago, but I think I've finally recovered from the self-inflicted torture of putting the "Brysons 2008" photo/video slideshow together, so I'm ready to take on my blog and upload some holiday memories. (If this sentence made no sense to you, you are one of the lucky ones who hasn't been privy to one of my photo montage deadline meltdowns! It really is a sick hobby!)
Anyway, Christmas and New Years were great!!! We had my sister, Jen, and her dog, Sophie, here for Christmas and my brother, Rob, came out for New Years. During this time, Dani also celebrated her 3rd birthday and Jeremy and I spent our 14th wedding anniversary, shopping, watching the new James Bond flick and sharing dinner at Chili's.
On Christmas Eve, we spent the evening at Jeremy's parents home enjoying their annual party filled with Santa, food, presents, food, a pinata, food, and dessert! Thankfully, this year no one awoke us to vomit-filled upper bunks (that's a story from 2005! Can anyone say, Mommy just had a c-section! Cleaning up puke is definitely not on the doctor's "okay to do" list!)
Oh yeah, back to 2008, our girls kindly let us sleep in until 8am - yeah, no kidding 8AM! And then we headed downstairs to the presents. Actually, this year there wasn't much under the tree. Back in August we decided to pull a "Christmas with the Kranks" and forgo the many gifts for one big cruise vacation. So in 3 days, Jer, me, Nat and Em will be hoisting anchor and heading to Mexico for 5-days of FUN, FUN, FUN! Dani is going to stay home this time and have 5-days of FUN, FUN, FUN with Hilary!!
What was under the tree from Santa were supplies to make "school kits" to donate to LDS Humanitarian Services. The girls had an enjoyable time assembling the supplies into 20 school bags. The bags will eventually be sent around the world to places like orphanages where there is a need for children to have basic school supplies. Here's the link to the Humanitarian Services page where we learned what to do: http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,4598-1-3263-1,00.html
This was a great way for the girls to give a little more and feel the real Spirit of Christmas as we served those we don't even know.
We spent the rest of Christmas day at home enjoying Jer's family as they came by to exchange gifts, and of course we ate most of the leftovers from the night before. Jen flew home that evening and we finished the rest of Christmas doing none other than - EATING!!! We had a delicious prime-rib dinner with the Checketts. I guess you could say we had a very Full-Filling Christmas.
New Years came with food too - but it was more exciting to have Rob visiting! We spend Dec. 31st getting Rob some contact lenses (his first time with contacts - little painful); fighting the crowds at Costco to get pizza for lunch (Costco must have broken some sort of fire code there were so many people inside!!!); and going to downtown Austin's First Night to check out all things Austin - including the ecclectic, but always entertaining, Grand Procession Parade!
We finished off the year with - you guessed it - more food at the Checketts. Happy 2009 - they're now sending me to the FAT FARM!!! But, of course, not before we spend Jan 1st at the Ferguson's strapping on the old barbeque feedbag! It was an absolutely fabulous day spent on their ranch enjoying lots of great friends and dutch oven chocolate cake and cobbler!
So now that your full just from reading our holiday menu, uh, I mean activities, enjoy the above slideshow to go with the story.