We are home!

We had a great time in Louisiana. We left Sunday and there was very little traffic and other than some rain in Georgia, the weather was great. My niece and her girls and my sisters came to see us at mom's Monday night and we opened gifts. Katie had quite a large pile of gifts. Tuesday we went to my nephew's house for Christmas and opened gifts with them and had a huge Christmas feast and some Cajun Christmas music. It was great! We had a wonderful time. Wednesday, I took Brittanie to have her senior pictures taken at the same photographer that did mine 20 years ago. I also had my mom and Katie take some with her. The photographer was telling us how much worse crime is in Opelousas since hurricane Katrina hit and spread those criminal losers all over the place. He was robbed at gun point 5 months after Katrina. The boy that robbed them wasn't poor. His mom was a nurse and his dad a building contractor. He was just a loser. Things are scary down there now. But I digress. Brittanie went to out with her cousin, Lauren, and some of Lauren's friends to see a movie and whatever. Well she didn't get home until late and I stayed up waiting for her to come home. We went to bed at 1:30am. Tom had gone to bed at 9pm. Well the plan was to get up and leave at 8am Thursday morning. Well, we didn't wake up till 10am! We didn't get on the road until 11:30am central time. It was like driving through a mine field! We had three rocks hit the windshield (I will have to get it replaced because one spot is really bad), 3 18-wheelers pulled out in front of us, a Honda Accord was pulling over on us, and when we got almost to Pelion, a deer walked out onto the road right in front of us. Luckily Tom is very careful in driving at night because of the deer problem we have around here so he was able to stop in plenty of time to let the deer go back into the woods. But we made great time. We got home at 11:50pm eastern time. That's 11 hours 20 minutes!

We did have a great Christmas. By the way, here is a list of the wonderful gifts we got:

Tom:
3 Gamecock T-shirts (one from Brittanie and the others from me)
Gamecock PJ bottoms (from me, which Brittanie stole)
A very cool Carolina Panther ornament (from Tom's brother and his wife)
Nice shirt and matching socks (from Tom's parents)

Me:
VERY nice SkullCandy headphones (from Tom)
USC figurine (from Brittanie)
O'Charley's gift certificate (from Tom's brother and his wife)

Brittanie:
Coca-Cola PJ's
Chris Daughtry concert tickets
Season Pass to Carowinds
Pirates of the Caribbean DVD
Jeff Dunham Spark of Insanity DVD
Phone for her room
ID bracelet
Rope chain
$100 cash
When Rock Band becomes available for the PS2, we will buy that too.
*All of the above was from us. Plus she got:
$50 from my mom
$40 from my niece
$30 from my nephew

Katie:
Tekno Robot Dog
Shrek the Third DVD
Leapster case for her L-Max
3 games for her L-Max
My Little Pony Pinkie Pie
4 set of PJ's (Spongebob, Disney Princess, Sketcher's nightgown, & Limited Too I love Horses)
ID bracelet
*All of the above was from us
Hot Wheels starter set (from Brittanie)
*18 wheeler full of cars
*Gum ball machine
*$20 cash
*Play jewelry
*Gun that shoots sponge disks
*Jewelry chest
*All of that was from my mom. There was more but I can't remember right now.
My Little Pony grooming kit with a personalized bag and 4 ponies from my niece
Bag full of Cars stuff from my nephew and his wife.

Tom's brother and his wife gave us our favorite gifts. I didn't know they knew how much we liked O'Charley's! The ornament was awesome. Brittanie couldn't wait to put it on the tree. I told her that we are taking the tree down in a couple of days but she wanted to put it on there anyway. Katie hasn't opened their gifts yet but I'm sure it will be great.

I will blog more this weekend with pictures from our trip. I need to head to bed because now that my mom is here for 3 weeks to take care of Katie and help me out with the household stuff, I'm going to try my best to catch up on my typing!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!