Feeling Guilty...

I've been meaning to sit down at this computer so many times in the past week or so and do exactly what I'm doing now, blogging. But things just kept coming up and I've been feeling so horrible that it's been over a week since the last time I blogged. I think it may even be getting closer to two weeks. Well, I was feeling really guilty until I sat down and checked out all the regular blogs that I check out and noticed that almost everyone else is in the same position that I'm in - taking a short hiatus to spend time with family, friends and well, themselves. So now I'm not feeling quite as guilty knowing I'm not the only one who hasn't updated their blogs in a while. But now I have the dilemma of what to share. Do I try to go back to around the time of my last blog and share everything that has happened since then, or do I just start with where I am now? I guess a short recap would be okay, so I'll try not to make it three hours long (I only have about 25 minutes until Sydney has to wake-up from her morning nap to get everything out anyways).

So the farthest back that I'm even going to dare to remember (even slightly correctly) is Christmas Eve. We had an awesome day here in South Florida. Sydney was nice and slept in a bit and then I made banana muffins for Jeff in bed and we watched a movie (no, I don't remember which one!) and relaxed for a long time. Well, I think it was more like Jeff relaxed for a long time because watching a movie while Sydney is awake isn't really relaxing for me, especially when we watch it in our bed on our new t.v. She seems to have some sort of death wish in which she rolls all over the bed, but mostly as close as possible to the edges freaking me out and I have to chase her all over the bed and around the room when she does get down. But thankfully she had a nap in the middle of the movie and I got about an hour of peace and quiet to watch the movie with Jeff. After the movie we had lunch and decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was absolutely beautiful, although, it really didn't feel like Christmas Eve to me. I'm a little to used to freezing and pouring rain rather than bathing suits and the beach. It was crazy to me to see people down on the beach in their bathing suits, enjoying the fun in the sun, running in and out of the water and building sand castles. Jeff and I, as true Floridians, decided to keep in simple and wear our jeans and t-shirts and just stroll along the beach rather than brave the freezing waters (it's probably pretty comparable to Canadian lakes during the summer, but to us it's numbing). It was surreal to realized that the place that I now call home is a place where people come to get away from the cold and enjoy sun, warmth and the beach. You definitely could tell by the pasty white skin who was from out of town and here on holidays. After our time at the beach we came home and then Jeff went off to get ready for our Christmas Eve service. I followed shortly later to get ready to help out in the nursery. It was a pack house at the service and a little crazy in the nursery with 4 people for 15 or so babies, but still better than those poor people in the 2-3 year old class with 19 kids and only 2 adults. After the service we made our way home and ordered pizza because I forgot to take anything out of the freezer and we had nothing to eat. So we ate pizza and then watched another movie in bed. As I'm writing this I'm afraid that I'm already confusing days, so if I am, sorry, but well, that's seems to be part of life while pregnant, having no memory.

Then came Christmas morning. Sydney nicely slept in until around 7:30 when we got up and went crazy looking for a video to tape Sydney's first Christmas on. After about half an hour of searching, we finally decided to just tape over something that we hope wasn't that important and have a go at the present opening. I sadly realized a day or two ago when asked for pictures of Christmas that between being so excited about opening presents and making sure that we video-ed the whole event that we never took a single picture of Christmas morning, or the rest of the day for that matter. Well, hopefully the video will be enough and maybe I'll be able to take a few stills from it at some point to add pictures to our ever increasing photo album. Anyway, it was probably the longest present opening I've ever been a part of with that few of presents. Sydney wanted to stop and play with every new present that she opened for hours. By the end I was opening her presents and just showing them to her to try and move things along so that we'd finish while it was still Christmas Day. After all the present opening, we packed up and headed out to one of our great friend's family's home to spend Christmas Day with the Geoppner family. They're all such wonderful people, totally making us feel right at home and included in their family. We stayed there for a long time (something like 8 hours or so, which is quite unusual for Jeff to spend that much time with any family, which means that he was having a really great time) and then headed home to get Sydney to bed. Once home we watched another movie in bed (if you're wondering what movies we watched, check out Jeff's blog for a critique of them all, because I have no idea which movie was which or when we watched which one) and then headed to sleep.

Well, the next couple days seem a bit blurry to me and I'm not quite sure that there's much to say about them other than well, they happened and now we're here. Last night we had Holiday Party (Christmas was over and it's not quite New Years, so I figure Holiday works best) party with Jeff's worship team and had a ton of fun playing Shout About It - Movies or something like that. It was a great game although for the second round we basically had all the parents of young children on our team and as it was getting late, we were all starting to fall asleep and your response time really slows down by that point and the whole game is based on who is the fastest, so we didn't do quite as well the second round as the first, but we still had a ton of fun. And now we're here and I'm already over Sydney hour long nap and have to go wake her up so that she'll sleep tonight. I'll try to find some pictures or something soon and try to do better at keeping this a little more up to date. Until next time...

p.s. If you're wanting to check out how big Sydney is getting and our 1st Christmas with her, Jeff has figured out some way to post the video somewhere on the net, but I think that you have to be part of our list of people to see the stuff, so if you want to see it, just email me or leave comment here or something and I'll see what I can do.