Goodbye 2008...

Today Mama came up and took Charles and me out for lunch. What a great way to spend the last lunch of 2008!
We are now getting ready to celebrate New Year's Eve - actually, getting ready to watch the ball drop in Times Square...This has been a wonderful year for Charles and me. Hopefully, 2009 will be even better!
We hope you all have a great New Year's Eve and a Happy New Year!!

Tuesday Evening Fun

Molly and I usually meet on Tuesday nights for a little girls only time -- first with tennis and after the winter weather moved in, for hot chocolate at a local coffee shop. With the hustle and bustle of the holidays we've missed several Tuesdays, but last night we resumed them. We had so much fun catching up and talking about our Christmases.
Molly was so sweet; she brought me a Christmas present - a cute little Origins sleep mask... Molly says that she has one, and her little boy Brady calls it her mouse. When she needs to take a nap, he'll tell her: "Mama, go get your mouse." How cute is that!! Thanks Molly for my mouse!

Let's Go Fly a Kite...

Today, Charles and I were running errands, and it was so windy. We decided it was the perfect day to fly a kite. After finding no kites at our first stop, we luckily stopped by Dollar Tree where we found a Star Wars kite for Charles and a Strawberry Shortcake kite for me!
After struggling to hold the kites down while putting them together... we were all set to fly our kites!

It took a little while to get them in the air...
but after a little while, they really took flight...

Charles had a little bad luck with his; the little cross rods fell out.
So, after I had a little fun flying Strawberry Shortcake...
I let him fly her for a little while. He had her flying so high, I couldn't get him and the kite in the picture!
We found his cross bars, so he was able to fly his kite, and I got Strawberry Shortcake back and took her for a little run...
We had so much fun today in the park flying our kites!

Christmas 2008

The weekend before Christmas, we traveled to Jackson for Christmas with Charles' family...
We enjoyed seeing Doug and Leslie's new house!

His mom made a delicious lunch of ham, dressing, sweet potato casserole, corn, English peas, rolls and a wonderful assortment of desserts. Doug fried a turkey which was really good! Charles couldn't get enough of it...After lunch, we opened presents. I think that Tyler and Tatum enjoyed the Legos we gave them. Charles certainly enjoyed helping the boys play with them!

I liked all of my presents, but especially the Christmas platter which was Charles' grandmother's...

Charles also liked his presents, and we both were really excited about the smoothie maker; we like making smoothies in the spring and summer and have already killed a couple of blenders with the frozen fruits!

After a nice afternoon with Charles' mom, Doug, Leslie, Tyler and Tatum, we traveled to Crystal Springs to deliver presents and had a good visit with Charles' dad, Pam and Nikki.

Christmas morning came pretty early at the Willoughby house - 6:00 a.m.

I always get to open my presents first, and this year, Toula really enjoyed helping me...

I was so excited when I opened my cute Coach gloves!
Charles always goes overboard with my presents, and as you can see by all the paper, this year was no different...
Toula had a great time hopping through all of the paper...

and chewing on it!
Charles did a great job with my presents again this year!Charles got to open his presents next...

and thought it would be funny to put on a Santa hat...
Charles got his "usual" presents along with a few other happies...
However, he got his big present, a new flat screen for the bedroom a little early!

Finally, Toula got to open her presents...
Although after all the fun she had with the wrapping paper, it took her a little while to get excited about her actual presents!!

We then went to Batesville for Christmas with Mama and Jerry. We enjoyed a delicious lunch of ham, mashed potatoes, candid sweet potatoes, corn casserole, English peas, pink salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs and rolls and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

After lunch, we got to open more presents!
I just love my new Kate Spade purse!

along with all of my other gifts...After I finished opening my presents, Charles opened his presents...
When Mama asked Charles what he wanted this year, he told her socks and money, so Mama and I went shopping and bought every single pair of the socks he likes that the store had in stock! In addition to his socks and money, he also had a couple of other happies to open...When Mama opened this one, she said she hoped that we hadn't gotten her a panini maker...
to her relief, we had just recycled the box!

We had a great visit with Mama and Jerry and had a wonderful Christmas!

Ho-Ho came to see us!!!

We enjoyed another wonderful holiday today with the coming of Christmas morning...We'll post some pics of our exciting day today and our celebrations abroad, but we wanted to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas today and hope that you all enjoyed the holiday season.

Merry Christmas,

Charles and Megan

Christmas Decorations...

We began decorating the house for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving by first putting up our Christmas tree...

We left the bubble lights off this year so that we would have more room for ornaments.

Charles unwrapped our ornaments...

So that I could hang them on the tree...
Toula's curiosity got the best of her; she had to "help" too...
I think our tree turned out pretty this year...
While I wanted to get our house ready for Christmas, I wasn't feeling too creative, so most of the decorations mirrored those from last year.
We decorated our front entry...and added a few touches of Christmas to our entry hall...
Of course, Bully had to have his usual Christmas bow...The mantle was decorated and the stockings were hung with care...I then moved to the coffee table...and chest in the living room...

and new this year, I put garland, jingle bell garland, ribbon and large Christmas ornaments (thanks Mom for passing along the ornaments!) to our bookcase...I also had to add a few Christmas decorations to the shelves. I was so glad to finally have a place to display the Mr. and Mrs. Clause painting that always hung in Ma's house at Christmas (they are on the top shelve to the right).

Then on to the dinning room, where I hung our feather wreaths on the French doors...

and brought out the feather trees and ornaments and "snow" for the domed stands and, of course, decorated the chandelier...
I then set the breakfast table with our 'Tis the Season and hung a kissing ball...and added garland to the island...along with a few other Christmas items...Then I added the gingerbread and peppermint tree to Ma's tea cart with a few other touches...Then on to the guest bath...
Which in addition to its other decorations, got a sparkly tree...and we couldn't leave out Toula's home...She had to have a little Christmas because she has been such a big help with unwrapping the ornaments and with wrapping presents!

Getting Ready for Christmas...

Charles and I started the Christmas season off early by going before Thanksgiving to paint our annual Christmas ornaments. We timed it perfectly because we had this year's ornaments back before we put up our tree. I painted the snowmen on the star, and Charles painted the reindeer...We put up our tree on the Saturday following Thanksgiving and finished most of the decorations around the house that weekend too!

This past Monday, Charles and I went to the Hernando Christmas Parade! The weather was perfect - clear and cool...we had a great time!
We arrived right before the start time but decided to watch it from further down the parade route. We had to wait for quite a while to catch our first glimpse of the parade, but we even had fun waiting...Members of the Armed Forces led off the parade with the colors. They were followed by police on motorcycles, several bands, a dance group, a group of Jeeps (some of which did tricks right in front of us which actually scared me a little - one Jeep rolled up and over the large tires on one of the other Jeeps), a group of tractors (a couple of which blew fire out of their stacks!), a group of big trucks, a group of old and decorated for Christmas cars, horses...

and, of course, floats!
There were many cute floats this year, but I especially liked the ones which blew foamy bubbles which looked like snow...
and there were lots of cute kids riding on the floats...

I think Charles and I waved to just about every single one of them!

The parade also included fire engines from just about every volunteer fire department in the county and from Hernando - and best of all - riding in the last fire truck was Santa!!