What are your goals for 2006?

Here are mine: They are small goals which I hope are easier for me to stick to. I think me keeping a daily food log will be the hardest goal below.

• I bought an awesome Franklin planner at Costco. It came with a black binder and day to day pages for only $40.00. I plan to keep track of my work to do’s, my daily to dos and my food intake in this journal. I especially want to keep track of my food intake.
• I hope to make dinner for our family at least 2x a week. This is during the weekday.
• I want to start taking my lunch to work more often and take healthy lunches. I’ve gotten into the let’s go out to eat way of mind.
• I want to workout at least 3 times a week. I workout about 2x a week now.

That’s all for me. I don’t like to make too many New Year’s resolutions. The fewer I have the easier it is to stick to them.

Oh and I have a secret I want to share with you, but I can't for a few more weeks. Anyone have a guess? :)

I updated Friday and Saturday entries below and backdated them. So don't forget to look below for more updates and read my story about the whistler on Friday. It was a riot!

My mom went nutso this year for Christmas. I don't know what her limit was for the each of us, but I can only imagine it had to be $200 or more. The tree was packed to the hilt - more than I've ever seen. It took us 2 hours to open all the gifts and we even had to have a potty break, and my brother Greg, his girlfriend Audrey and my mother had a smoke break in between opening gifts. Joey was overwhelmed with so many toys.

It started out - we slept in until 8:30am. We called mom to tell her we just woke up and she about had a cow. She thought we were up north and had 2 hours to drive down. We actually decided to come down to our house Friday night so we didn't have to deal with bad weather the next morning. Once she realized we were only 1/2 hour away, she calmed down.

We got to my parent's house and had breakfast. My dad went all out as usual - pancakes, sausage links, sausage patties, toast, muffins, juice, and more. Yum.

We decided afterwards that there was no doing dishes or cleaning the kitchen - it was time to unwrap gifts! I played Santa. Joey had such a ball opening all the gifts and most of them under the tree were for him. He got so many Thomas cars he has 53 different pieces for his Thomas collection. He got a big Thomas the train track, he got a thomas the train racer where four Thomas cars go down this track and race to the finish. He got a TON of Pajamas and yelled NO when all that was in the box was clothes and not toys. He was upset about that. He also got a TON of matchbox cars, a big wheels ride on bike and a few John Deere tractors and trucks.

At one point I kept telling him that he needed to open another gift. He didn't want to and decided to take his new Thomas trains and put them on the gift and used it as a road - see the photo to the left. He finally opened the gift after much prodding. I think he was just so overwhelmed.

Greg (my brother) and his gf got a new cephelon pots and pans set. I got that last year but he needed new pots and pans for his new house. Joe and I got them a bunch of Cephelon utensils (he got those for me last year) and a $100 Lowe's gift certificate so he can fix up his new home.

Dad got a lot of shirts from Joe and I and mom bought him a branch cutting chain saw. It's a chain saw on a huge stick so he can cut down tall branches.

I guess the funny story around this Christmas was that mom was cold with her own pajamas and decided to steal dad's pajama pants a few times this winter. Dad said the hell with that and went to Kohls and bought her about 10 different pajama pants/shirts outfits. He individually wrapped each one (badly I have to admit and mom teased him about it) and we gave them to her and she kept laughing. She never knew that he got those for her. The other funny thing was he said he was tempted to buy these pajamas that was a bunny suit with feet and ears. He threatened to go buy it after Christmas for her! She also got a gift certificate to her favorite yarn store and the shark cleaner.

I got a Ihome radio alarm clock for my Ipod, and an indoor/outdoor weather station and Joe and I got some cephelon cooking sheets, a cephelon roaster and a cephelon griddle and a bunch of other stuff. Joe got a gift certificate for ebay - which he already spent and a few other things. I came home Christmas night and ordered a 250 gig external hard drive for our computer since I've already filled up our 60 gig!!

After all the opening was done we got ready to go to the Dziekan families house (my dad's family) for Christmas.

It was nice to see everyone. I haven't seen some of the aunts and uncle's for a long time. My cousin Teresa lives in Wisconsin and I haven't seen her in about a year so it was great to see her too!

A special surprise was that Uncle Randy dressed up as Santa Claus and did an awesome job. Joey wasn't too sure about this guy but we got our picture taken anyhow. He got a set of the weebles from Santa.

After Santa left we opened gifts. Joey got a set of Geotrax - a different train set, from Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Gary and he loved it. We also saved a gift from our Christmas for him to open and it was a good thing we did because he was getting all ticked off that he only had opened the two. He doesn't really understand that the rest weren't for him.

The nice thing of the evening was all the adults did a gift exchange but they all picked a number. The first person picks a gift. The second person can steal their gift or pick a gift. By the time you get to close to the last person, you can steal anyone's gift you want. The only catch is one gift can only be stolen 3 times.

My aunt really wanted these 100 year old coins and so did everyone else. Everyone kept stealing them from everyone else. She finally got them and then my uncle stole them from her. My dad was the last one in the game to play, so he stole the coin from his brother and went up to my aunt, took her hand, put the coin in her hand and said, Merry Christmas. I love you. My dad didn't want a gift. He just wanted to get the coin for her for his sister. They hugged and my aunt had tears in her eyes.

Overall we had an awesome Christmas.