Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Merry Christmas!

This was our first Christmas since we have been in TN that we did NOT travel home to TX or have both sets of grandparents here at different times. What this meant was that we had ALL the gifts for our family, from Brent's parents, my grandmother, my great aunt and my parents under the tree at the same time. You could hardly see the tree. You must remember also that we had 2 more kids stuff under there too. It was a little nutty so we decided to do gift opening in "rounds". That proved to be a good plan. After each round we threw away all the paper, took stuff out of the box (which took all 5 of the adults we had to take stuff out of packages and put stuff together). Poor Brent was putting stuff together all afternoon :-) It was such a fun day and so many new memories.

I took this pic as the kids were waiting to run down the stairs on Christmas morning. To say they were excited was an understatement. By the time we took this picture they had already been up for about 45 min. We made them wait (mean I know) because my parents were sleeping downstairs and were tired from the long drive they had the day before from TX.


Jordan opening a present...
Hayley's gifts from Memaw and Poppy
Rachel was pure joy over every present!
Jordan's new watch from Nena and Pops
I loved this pic...just wish my dad's eyes were open :-)
My mom and Rachel
Whitney and my mom wearing her new hat, scarf and mittens from Meemee
We moved the coffee table against the wall so we had a big open space to open presents. It was a good move on our part.

I love the next 2 pictures. I took them as they opened their favorite present; an IPOD touch! These are going to be such a blessing to us the next time we make the drive to TX!
It was crazy, but Oh so fun! I was sad when it was all over! I LOVE Christmas, everything about it. We added some new traditions this year and my favorite was our advent calendar. We read a scripture, did an activity to go along with the scripture and then each had a piece of candy. It was a great way to have a devo every day and learn about all that Christmas means. We also did the candles on the advent wreath and it was neat at our big dinner on Christmas night to light all the candles and review all they had learned over the last 25 days.

Unlike many of you I have not started taking down decorations, but am planning to today. Blessings to you all...

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Christmas Eve 2010

For all of you who have told me that you wish you could be a fly on my wall this Christmas, I am going to do my best to give you an accurate picture :-) It has been the best Christmas ever! Big families are SO fun during the holidays. I have been quiet on the blog for the past few weeks as we have been busy preparing for the holidays. I just can't get it all done. Today is my day off. I told everyone that Mom is not cooking or cleaning today. I have been working on downloading pics and watching the kids play with all their new stuff. We did take a break and head outside to enjoy sledding in the snow. I will show that in a later post :-)


We started a new tradition: Eating Ethiopian food for Christmas Eve. We went to our local ET restaurant and picked up some Injera, yellow pea and cabbage. This mom made Doro Wat, Gomen, Beef Tibs and red lentils. It was lots of fun and yummy too!

Doro Wat (Chicken stew)





After dinner we rolled out cookie dough and made cookies for Santa. We enjoyed eating a few too!








The First Gift of Christmas...Every year the kids open one gift on Christmas Eve. It is always new matching PJ's.





Christmas pics to follow...it was a GREAT one!