The Day in Review

No cards to share yet, but instead, how about a photo recap of the past few days? As much as I love getting together and celebrating with my family, I'm going to be honest and say I'm so glad Christmas is OVER!!!! Yippee! I know many of you love Christmas and want it to last forever, but me? One day of celebration for me is perfect, and it's even more perfect if I don't have to do all the work! I'm exhausted.

My all-time favorite part of the day yesterday was everyone gathering in the living room to sing songs, accompanied by my oldest brother, Guy (the oldest), on the guitar!

I must say, we sound FABULOUS together! We jammed for over an hour, singing Billy Joel's "Piano Man", John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy", and even the theme song to "Gilligan's Island" (we even sang the song from The Brady Bunch called "Keep On, Keep on, Keep on, Keep On Dancing All Through the Night"....!!!!!). It was a BLAST!

This is a shot of my three brothers together. Paul on the left (youngest brother), Guy (oldest), and Chris. I'm the baby of the family. This is my all time favorite thing to do when I get together with everyone. I am so thankful for the gift of song--and so thankful my family can sing! I don't know what it is, but music makes me feel so happy to sing with these guys!

In the end, everyone was gone by 715p, I think, but clean up took a while after that. Of course, I plopped my butt down on the couch after everyone left, I didn't have the energy to clean. We did some of it here and there, but a little bit got put off until this morning, {gasp}!!! Yes, the cat's out of the bag....we are NOT anal about cleaning up after celebrations! The hubster usually does the most of it, bless his heart, cuz I'm usually spent from all the preparations, cooking, etc.

Here are a few more shots from our day yesterday...

Here are the boys going crazy when they opened a co-gift for the two of them....a malt machine! An authentic malt mixer, just like the ice cream shops have! They are malt fanatics, and since our blender broke a year or so ago, it was time to replace it so the boys could have malts again.

This is my mom and second oldest brother doing a funny little skit together! It was hysterical. My brother was supposed to be speaking with a spanish accent, but an italian accent was all he could muster!

This is my mom and my oldest nephew Daniel. He's a junior in college. Doesn't my mom look like a million bucks? I sure hope I get her genes in that respect when I'm older--I got all the others!

This is Chris and Diane, my second oldest brother and his wife. They've been married 25 years! Hardly look like that could be, mmm? They wouldn't even considere a silver wedding celebration, cuz that's for OLD people! LOL!

And finally, this is my dad, Chuck, in the foreground, and Doug's dad, Karl, in the background. Aren't they adorable? My dad would laugh hysterically if he heard me associate him with the word "adorable"! In fact, if anyone else from my family is reading this that knows my dad, they'd laugh hysterically too!