Only a few hours left to say goodbye to 2008.

The year that went by in a blur. This will have to go down as about the most hectic year of my life.

It's been a while since I've had time to write a blog. Christmas was great. We did our traditional get together Christmas Eve with Leslie's family and then we held our fourth annual Christmas breakfast at our house. We're getting better at it every year. Even with two kids running around on a Christmas morning high we got everything ready and cooked breakfast for 16 people with minimal chaos. We made belgian waffles with homemade strawberry sauce, shredded potato casserole, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage gravy and biscuits, and a homemade pull apart pecan cinnamon loaf. Everything was awesome. We did a fantastic job if I do say so myself and everyone was stuffed.

Noah got the one gift he really, really wanted. Spike the Ultra Dinosaur. It's like a two foot tall remote control dinosaur that can walk, sit up, fetch, laugh, roar, and a bunch of other stuff. For the last six months we've had to stop at the Spike display at Target and let him play with it every time we went. He also got a few Hot Wheels playsets, a bunch of games, and some Martian Matter which is like a little create-your-own-alien out of slime thingy. He loves that. He also requested a Chia Pet, which he got thanks to my brother. I should also mention that he really wanted Mighty Putty, Aqua Globes, Sham-Wow and anything else that has an informercial. The kid is a bit odd sometimes...he loves informercials. He can recite them to us word for word.

Bethany got some nice clothes, a fairy playset, a green fuzzy purse, some My Little Ponys, and a few other things. Its not easy to buy for an 18 month old girl we discovered. I am sure that will change in time. Very, very sure.

Tonight we are having a very small get together with just a few friends for New Year's Eve. We're making some snacks and appetizers and hopefully will just have a really nice relaxing evening watching all the kids play.

Because 2008 was just so darn busy for me I ended up not using all of my vacation time so I'm carrying a week into the next year. That gives me seven full weeks of vacation to schedule sometime in 2009. I just hope I am able to put it to good use.

I will write a blog again very soon containing my master-plan for 2009.