I am very sorry for the very brief blog yesterday! I was MUCH too excited about my presents, Christmas and my boyfriend & friends were over. It was just too crazy to blog! It was hard still to pull myself away from my presents… but I did want to tell you about them too!

Christmas morning we always have a scavenger hunt in our house. Instead of tearing apart presents for 10 minutes, its fun to take an hour searching for you gifts! Then we eat breakfast, and open stockings afterwards. We play with our presents for a little while, and then open the presents from my parents. (The first ones were from Santa!) Later that night my parents open their presents and usually still manage to surprise me with one LAST thing! It is super fun and makes it an all day affair so you are NEVER bored!

I asked for a Wii this year if you remember seeing my Christmas wishlist. Well luckily Santa FINALLY managed to find one in stock *wink* Seriously it took my parents and me 2 full weeks to find one in stock and order it. I was also super lucky to not only get Madden 09, Wii Sports, and Mario Kart like I asked, I also got Super Mario Galaxy (from Walter, my boyfriend), Wii Play, and Mario Party 8. My parents NEVER found Rock Band or Rock Band 2 in stock for Wii so they ended up giving the money to get it myself. After calling every Walmart and Best Buy within 100 miles of Charlotte, I finally found it online at Circuit City today at Concord Mills. I managed to order the LAST ONE in the store and have them hold it for me. It is probably the most fun EVER.

Apart from my Wii which I am absolutely in LOVE with! My parents also got me an Antique Kodak Folding Camera (from around 1914). It is awesome and I absolutely love it!

They also got me the VERY first volume of Popular Photography. I absolutely love that magazine and now I have Volume 1 of it. The first issue is from May 1937. WOW!

They were also nice enough to get me lots of clothes to send me off with, since I never buy clothes! (I hate shopping and all my money goes for camera gear!) I can always count on mom, she can get me, Walter, or an aunt all in style clothes that fit our personality. She should be hired as a personal shopper because she is the BEST at it!

My surprise this year was a new laptop case! I really, really needed one. I have been using a Vera Bradley messenger bag. It is cute but its hurts your shoulder after about 10 minutes. They got me this awesome new Incase backpack. It has a special place lined with velvet for your laptop so it is safe, and for your ipod so it wont get scratched. It has lots of room to put books, clothes, and TONSSS of pockets EVERYWHERE. I absolutely love it.

So my Christmas was the best EVER hands down! I hope everyone else’s was also! Now the Wii keeps blinking at me telling me to finish my game of Super Mario Galaxy (or get killed by the Dinosaur!)

Yes there are no pictures tonight, and yes it will be short! I am saving my Christmas story for tomorrow. For now though I will say I got my Wii and I am very, very excited about it! That is why this post is extra short! I have been playing it all night! My boyfriend Walter and his sisters (who are also two of my best friends) came over and we played Madden 09 and Mario Kart for hours. I got Mario Kart, Madden 09, Wii Sports, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy, and Mario Party 8! If I can find it in stock, I am on a mission to get Rock Band 2 tomorrow! I am so excited, so if you can forgive me for not a long post, I am off to play Wii again!

Today was the Christmas celebrations with MY family! My parents and Walter and I went out to Olive Garden for lunch. YUM! Usually we go to my grandmother’s house, however my aunt got a brand new house this year so we changed tradition. While there I did a scavenger hunt for my grandmaw to find her present tomorrow! It is always fun for her to have something to do on Christmas morning.

This is my lovely grandmother in front of the Christmas tree!

Just part of the family. My dad, grandmother, and Aunt Betty (it was her house). The rest of the family was coming later.

This is my beautiful mother, I grabbed a shot of her after she made me take too many pictures!

After grandmaw’s, we went off to Shelby. We had some awesome Cracker Barrel food with my parents, maw maw, Walter, Uncle Robert & Aunt Heather, Aunt Heather’s mom, and my cousins Jacob and Josh! We had lots of fun watching movies (and Man v. Wild where he ate raw snake EW!) and opening presents.

This is from the chaos of handing out presents!

Speaking of presents this is what I got!

From Maw Maw:

I loveeeee money!!!!!

From Uncle Robert, Aunt Heather, Jacob & Josh:

A cute ECU teddy bear because they are my team and some awesome Bath & Body works stuff!

From Heather’s mom:

A VERRRY cute scarf and glove set!

I had such a fun day today! I just finished up wrapping presents! Now I have to make sure I don’t go downstairs and ruin the scavenger hunt my parents set up. I KNOW, I am wayyyy too old for this, but if I am at home I have to have fun like old times! Now, if I can only go to sleep I am wayy too excited! Let’s hope you see some awesome pictures from a Wii on here tomorrow!

Sorry this blog post is SOOO image heavy! Also, PLEASE note these are JUST SNAPSHOTS and do not reflect any photographic merit!

I had Christmas with Walter’s grandparents and whole family tonight. It was so fun and full of life!

We crammed so many people in that room!

Walter’s cousins daughter Melody is just too cute and she wanted to open presents early but we had to sing first!

Their dog was just as eager as we were to open presents!

And trust me there were LOTS of presents!

After opening presents, what better is there to do than have a paper fight??

Walter’s cousin Tricia regretted getting up when she got bombarded with paper!

The aftermath of the paper war!

…and this was only about 1/16th of it!

Didn’t Walter decorate his house absolutely lovely??

It reminds me of a gingerbread house!

It just looked so much like CHRISTMAS yay!

Now…. PRESENTS!!!

I got Walter a new Nerelco Electric Razor (he had never had an electric razor), a Carolina Panthers calendar, notebook, spiral bound notebook, and folders.

From Walter:

He got me Super Mario Galaxy (I used to love Mario 64 when I was younger so much!), and a nunchuck for the Wii I don’t have yet!

A wheel for the Mario Kart I don’t have yet! I love the presents from him, it is just sad I can’t play with them yet!

From Walter’s parents:

A controller for Madden ’09 I don’t have yet!

And a SUPER cute shirt!

From Walter’s sister Victoria (she drew my name for Christmas):

Superrrr cute PJs with peace signs all over them, and they are fuzzy! I am wearing them now! And aloe socks that feel like heaven!

Super awesome peace earrings too!

From Walter’s grandparents:

YUMMMY chocolate! I will have to hide this! haha

Well it was an AMAZING night! I had so much fun and I hope you enjoy the snapshots of my life. Be prepared for my family tomorrow! (and be prepared to laugh on Christmas if Santa doesn’t bring me a Wii!)

First off, please KNOW these are just snapshots, they show no photographic quality at all. Reason? The boys left me everytime I stopped so I just snapped random snapshots!

I wanted to blog each day this week, as a “Christmas Special”. I just thought it would be cool since I have so much going on, you could get a glimpse in my Christmas traditions.

Tonight Walter (my boyfriend), Matt, and Kevin went to Mcadenville, NC also known as Christmastown USA. People all over the state come to drive & walk through this lovely little town. Traffic is backed up for miles in all directions, and do not expect to drive I-85 between 5:30 and 10:00 pm. We had a TON of fun, even though it was 28 degrees and we about froze to death. Our stop for Hot Chocolate and Mashmellows saved it!

Every house (almost) is decorated in the town!

This tree is dedicated to all the soldier and veterans!

This made me laugh, the deer was being reflected HUGEE on the side of the house. Then kids started doing it too!

A lot of the houses, including this one had Christmas music playing!

This is the cute little pond, it has Santa blowing snow and a star of Bethlehem! I love it so much!

This was day #1 of Christmas week, so expect more! I love Mcadenville, and if you live in NC and have never been it is a MUST!