1st Married Christmas and Andrew Turns 25!

It sounds exciting right?! We're married, we're happy, we are celebrating firsts as a married couple. Well that was all well and good for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Christmas, not so much. The short version of it is I had a stomach bug over the Christmas break, then when that resolved itself I wound up with a nice little cold for New Years. Lovely!

Andrew and I exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve with the plan of heading to his mom's early Christmas morning. He got a new iPhone 5s and I got a Kindle Fire HD (tablet/e-reader). We knew the gifts ahead of time so we figured we would open presents Christmas Eve to have time to play with our goodies before doing family stuff all day on Christmas. Turns out that was a good plan.

We could only put a few presents under the tree immediately before opening them because Sidney and Rico kept trying to unwrap them for us. Sneaky little buggers.

Don't judge me Peggy. We ran out of Christmas wrapping paper. haha

Thanks Howard and Tammy!!

I stole them both. Actually the both went into the new car fund.

Totally wrong paper. I think he still liked the gift.

 He's finally joined the iphone community!

For my gift he took over photos, therefore I have only this one picture of opening my gift. It's the "Really? You're taking that many pictures?" face. I think he gets this look a lot actually. :)

Despite not having pictures of my new toy, the Kindle Fire HD has been an awesome gift so far. Apparently the reason for him getting it was so I had something to do while he played games on the Xbox, therefore I was unable to complain and he could play more xbox. (This strategy has actually worked). Wonderful reasoning, honey. haha.

As far as i can tell it's as good as an ipad. It runs off the Amazon marketplace, so the apps are a little different and it runs a little differently thank I'm used to. I've already read a couple of books on it and as a fan of 'real' books, this e-reader is working just fine. I'm getting used to it and am quite pleased! Well played Andrew.

Once we were all teched-out and living in the future with our new gadgets, Bill came over to do a little present exchange. By this point I was not feeling all that well. Nausea, headache, a general feeling of unease. I knew I didn't feel well and that it was more than just an everyday stomach ache. Remember that trip to visit Ashland and Harlee from the last post? Well a stomach bug had been going around their house for about a week before. I was worried I'd caught their bug, but was holding out hope it was a fluke.

Andrew bought Billy an Alabama Santa hat, and I had a framed picture for him from the Mumford and Sons concert. It was this one.

Bill's gift to us was awesome, but it almost gave me a heart attack. He bought us a movable fire pit and set it up on the back porch. We'll move it out to the yard once I've raked up all the leaves, but for fun he went ahead and got it going. While we were exchanging gifts I noticed flames through the back window and thought there was a fire in the yard. I jumped up, started scrambling and trying to get the guys to help, was about to grab the fire extinguisher and was ready to act! Bill is sitting there saying "I put that there. Open your present!" (he had wrapped the large box the fire pit came in). After the initial shock wore off we went outside and admired a very cool gift. It seriously scared me to death. We have a ton of leaves out back and since Andrew (unfortunately) smokes, I'm always slightly worried that an ember from the cigarette may catch fire. Thankfully that was not the case. But wow did it get my heart pumping!! Poor quality photos of the fire pit below.

After Bill left even Sidney got in on the action. Her plastic squeak toy last about 10 minutes.

By the time things had settled down and I'd gotten in bed I knew something was not right. Sure enough, about 3 am I was wide awake and hugging the toilet. Yay. Merry Christmas to me. The sun came up and when the alarms went off to start getting ready I told Andrew about my night of sickness (dude slept through me climbing in and out of bed all night for trips to be sick) and sadly admitted that I was not well enough to leave. I told him to go to his Mom's but he refused to leave me. He called and let them know that he would not leave me alone on Christmas. Through sickness and health badge earned. So while our families were eating, opening presents and celebrating together, I slept and he watched tv on the couch. Not the way I'd imagined our first married Christmas!

I made it through the day and Thursday felt a little better. I got out and did some family visits and spread some Christmas cheer, but by the end of the day I felt awful again. I'd worn myself out and set back recovery. 

That Friday (12/27) was Andrew's 25th birthday and I just had to feel better. I did not want to let him down and spend his big day the way we did Christmas. I was definitely not 100% and was coming down with a cold, but we made it to dinner with family and Bill and had a great Kobe dinner, complete with a funny guy hibachi chef. He opened presents and got some money, a shirt, undershirts and gym shorts, but Bill pulled away with the best gift award. He got Andrew a Florida State hat with his lucky number (52) and last name sewn into the side. Very cool and a perfect gift for my Florida State fan.

Sadly his actual gift from me was supposed to be an Otterbox for his new phone, but the one he wanted was not being sold just yet, so he is still waiting on that one. We decided to do the actual partying part of celebrating another night when I was feeling better and more of our friends were able to come. We had a few people who had to work so we'll catch up with them soon!

My handsome man! Happy Birthday babe!