Friday before Christmas Ellen and I drove up to Corinth to my Mom’s house. Corinth isn’t all that big, about a 1/4 of the size of the town we live in now, so it is sorta like going back in time if you know what I mean. Life slows down tremendously when I go back home. The nephews and nieces are about the only thing that keep things interesting. I do enjoy going back to the area where I grew up. I know all the back roads and every mile or so reminds me of another story. Either about friends or college mostly.
Tonia (my sister) now lives in North Carolina so they were driving in on Friday as well. According to my sister Amanda, they weren’t going to be arriving until about 5:30 PM. We arrived around 3:30 on Friday and walked into the house to a big surprise!!!!!!!!!! Apparently there was a race to get back home that I wasn’t informed of 😉
On Saturday night we exchanged gifts at my Mom’s house. Normally we do it on Christmas Eve but because my Grandfather wanted to have the family get together on Christmas Eve for lunch, we moved our’s to Saturday night. It is a good thing we did it early. As I told my sister Amanda, at least we can now play with the kids instead of having to pack up and leave after opening gifts. Sonia and Heath were the last ones to arrive even though they live a few miles away and it is a good thing because we could barely keep the kids from ripping into the presents. They are so funny. Remind me a lot of someone, hmmm.
Ellen got me an XBOX 360 and between her, my Mom and her Mom I racked up on the games for it:
- Call For Duty 3
- Madden 2007
- Gears of War
- Outfits
- Superman Returns
- Ultimate Alliance
- Quake 4
- NBA Live 07
BTW if you play, my gamer tag is Z0RKA (0 is a zero btw). So far I’m loving the XBOX 360. Although I can’t get it to stream Media Center over wireless yet everything else is working great. Now I am going to have to buy a new 1080p HDTV to play the games on. It is killing me to play them on my old Sony Trinitron TV. It is an endless cycle of one electronic gizmo requires another. Thank goodness they are suppose to come down in price over the next several months.
Ellen got a FatHead of a Michigan helment, audio cds (about 15 of them), hot chocolate maker, books, clothes, shoes, purses and more.
My Mom got a bread maker, GPS (from Tonia), toaster, purse and some other stuff. And Ellen’s Mom got one gift this year, but it was a GREAT gift. She got a new Gateway Intel Core Duo laptop. Really nice laptop to replace her old computer. Christmas day we set it up and got her hooked up on AOL for internet service since she only has a phone line. She may sign up with Comcast later on, she is still getting used to the new laptop.
It was great to see everyone this year. I tried to take a lot of pictures of everyone and for those I missed I do apologize. You can view the pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157594453432728/.
