Let the Christmas Festivities begin...and some SEC football!

Oh how I love and miss these ladies!!!!

These are my best friends from my childhood days!  (Minus Jess - we completely forgot to take a picture until she had already left and it was too late).  And every year, this group gets together around Christmas-time for a Christmas party.  And without fail, we start early and stay late...til 1:30 AM this year.  We just have so much to talk about and so much good food...

...that the party goes on and on.  The boys come along too, so we have to put on some video games to entertain them while we chat the night away.  I don't think they seem to mind too much.

In fact, us girls were wrapping things up and starting to gather the dishes we had brought and it was the guys who had to have a "rematch" and play one more game on Call of Duty.

They cracked us up as they went from sitting to standing to creeping closer and closer to the TV screen.  They were pretty intense about their game!

The next day was the SEC Championship game, which was a heart-breaker.  I knew that between Bama barely pulling out a win the week before against unranked Auburn and having lost to Florida last year in the SEC Championship, that they would come out fighting and could beat us.  But I did NOT expect them to beat us by three TD's!  I think all the Gator fans were in for a surprise.

We got to our seats and were sitting with a group of junior Florida students who knew they were in the family section, so as soon as I sat down, the guy next to me asked if I was a family member of a player.  I told him that #45 TJ Pridemore was our (Jamie was sitting next to me) brother and the guy was like "are you serious?!?  Pridemore's the best player on the NCAA game" and told one of his buddies a couple seats down that "hey, this is Pridemore's family" and that guy too was like "are you serious, I always play with him on NCAA...he's the best!" :) 

I don't know anything about TJ on the NCAA game, but I think he's the best too!  And I miss that kid like crazy - he's too dang far away!  But, despite the loss, it was a great weekend because TJ's coach ended up letting him come home with us for the night as long as he made it back to Florida the next day.  I think Sadie missed him too.  It was so fun to just have him home for a night.  I'm pretty sure he was glad to be home too.  Amidst the stress of football and finals from the previous couple of weeks, he hardly wiped the smile from his face the entire time.  I think it was just good for him to get off campus for a little bit.

The last minute permission to come home did pose a problem Sunday morning for church though.  He came upstairs dressed in his team gear and had me convinced it was all he had to wear to church since he couldn't fit into any of dad's clothes!   It turns out he had his suit from traveling (the team has to wear suits on the plane), so he actually ended up wearing that, which was still funny because no one dresses in suits for our casual church.  It turns out TJ never learned how to tie a tie correctly though so he got a Sunday morning tutorial from Dad. Nice combo huh...tie with sweats. 

And in my opinion, it's time for a haircut.  His girlfriend says the same.  He has a mullet in mind though - last year a mohawk, this year a mullet...

One of the best parts about having TJ home was getting to spend some time with Jennica too.  That crazy girl is too much fun!

And now...on to this weekend.  Ryan texted me yesterday and told me he had a surprise for me.  Recently we talked about going to the Transiberian Orchestra, but tickets were kinda expensive.  So, he starts asking me last night what I think this surprise is, so knowing he loves to surprise me, I was hesitant to say that I thought it might be the Transiberian Orchestra (and kinda hoped it was) since I knew they were performing in our area sometime around mid-December.  Finally, he had to give in and tell me because I would have to "prepare for" this surprise. 

Transiberian Orchestra?  Nope.

We're going to Figure Eight Island he tells me.  Wait a second, I say, isn't that that exclusive gated island where celebrities go on vacation and houses are like $6,000 to rent for a week?  Yeah.  And we're going there?!?  How'd you pull that one?!?  So, someone he knows has one of those million dollar beach houses there that's not being used this weekend and offered for us to use it for the weekend...FOR FREE.  Imagine my disappointment when I found out we weren't going to the Transiberian Orchestra...

I really do have the best husband in the world.  :) And now I'm off to spend the weekend snuggled up with him, a book, some coffee, and the sound of waves crashing in the background.

Have a good one!