Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Well, I can’t believe Christmas has come and gone once again. I truly do hope that everyone had as marvelous a celebration as we did. Since my family takes part in most of the traditional festivities on Christmas Eve, we have continued that tradition and I can’t imagine it any other way. We went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (yum!), went to Christmas Eve service and church and then back home to open gifts. I was full to the brim with food, cheer and blessings. On Christmas Day we went to Sea World to see the holiday shows. It was surprisingly not PC at all. In fact, for the most part they used traditional carols in their shows. It was the perfect way to spend the holiday, especially since most places are closed on the 25th.

Perhaps my favorite gift of all was the suitcase record player Jess got me to replace my old one that stopped working a few months ago. I was pretty devastated, so this made my night. I have been playing it almost nonstop ever since. Below is a photo of it playing the very first Bee Gees record I ever owned. It actually belonged to my father first, but I got my greedy little hands on it shortly after I fell in love with their music. I used to have a pretty good sized collection, but after many moves I finally got rid of the majority of my vinyl, so I am slowly building back up. In fact, I picked up about 10 or so this weekend. There is something special about hearing music the way it was heard by the masses when it was first released.