Christmas so far

Merry Christmas, I cannot believe how fast Christmas has gotten here, but it shouldn't be shocking at all to me since it happens like this every year! So far the holidays this year have been both exciting & fun and at the same time frustrating & stressful, but I guess that's the Christmas season for you. I knew our first Christmas together would be somewhat interesting as far as stress goes because of where, when our families celebrate Christmas and deciding what we were going to do and adding Jake's crazy work schedule into all that, it was definitely crazy there for awhile. But thankfully it has all worked out great, thanks to some very special family members we are getting to leave early on Christmas Eve and fly to Houston to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with all my family and we are doing Christmas with Jake's family tonight and doing New year's eve with his family also. We are so excited for Christmas with everyone!!

As far as shopping goes, we are still currently not finished yet, we only have a little bit left so hopefully we can get that this next week before we leave on Friday for Houston. So far I'm really excited to see our families open all the gifts we got them, that is the greatest part of Christmas to me, I just LOVE IT! Otherwise it's been such a fun season so far, it's always extra special and fun when you have little kids around to enjoy it with, the girls have had so much fun so far with everything! So far we have loved Elf on the Shelf, Larry has been watching them very carefully and reporting back to Santa every night, they have actually been pretty good lately. They did the donuts with santa again this year at their house which is always such a treat to see how magical Santa/Christmas is for all the little kids, it just makes you want to be a kid again or at least it does me! Here are so precious pictures from donuts with santa, hope you enjoy!







all 3 girls with Santa, everyone loved Santa this year!

Sleigh ride picture :)

Claire Louise wearing Santa's hat

Maggie and Santa

Elizabeth loved Santa, loved her outfit!!

Just hanging out on Santa's lap

All 3 precious girls...could not get enough of their smocked Christmas outfits

sweet Claire with Santa

She loved Santa if you can't tell...

the best picture I could get with my sweet girls, granted it was at the end of the party and they had obviously had Christmas/Santa picture overload, its definitely better than nothing since I needed a recent, updated picture of me with them really bad...

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving 2010 was much different than any we had ever been accustomed to so far in our lives, but we made it & it was such a fun weekend. Since Jake had to work the day before Thanksgiving and the day after for Black Friday we decided to stay here and my parents & brother decided to stay here and spend Thanksgiving with us since we couldn't go anywhere. We were also so happy to have my sister & brother in law come up to visit us for four days. So we got the holiday weekend all started with them getting here on wednesday afternoon and going out to dinner in Buffalo Gap for a great catfish meal. Since both Jake's family & my family were both in town for the holidays we had a double Thanksgiving which beforehand was somewhat stressful, but really ended up working out for the best, which I was so relieved about. Jake & I hosted our first Thanksgiving meal here at our apartment, it was alot of work, but very delicious. We did a big turkey, macaroni & cheese, green beans, cranberry mold, mashed potatoes, stuffing, & coconut creme pie, lemon chess pies for dessert. Luckily we didn't have to make all of that ourselves, Jake did the turkey, macaroni & cheese, green beans, & stuffing and his family helped out with bringing the rest of the side dishes and desserts. We got the big day started off early with a little breakfast and hanging out watching the parade on tv. Later we all ate lunch, had dessert, looked at all the shopping ads, and just hung out until Jake & I left to go to lunch at my parents house.

Lunch with my family was very delicious also, my dad, brother, & brother in law fried a turkey, my mom made the dressing & gravy to go with the turkey, my sister made macaroni & cheese, twice baked potatoes, I made squash casserole, we also had pistachio salad, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and rolls. We also had lots of wonderful pies for dessert, I made a pumpkin pie, my mom made chocolate meringue, coconut creme pie, & apple pie. We all ate lunch, watched football, talked about our christmas lists, played with all the dogs, and just had a wonderful time all being together. Unfortunately we were all too occupied to take one single picture all of the holiday weekend, which I definitely now regret.


The rest of the weekend consisted of lots of fun family time with all of us being together for once, which is pretty rare. On friday my mom, sister, & I ventured out to try and do a little bit of shopping on black friday, which in the end we were very unsuccessful, but it was fun being out shopping together. They came over to our apartment so that my sister could see it since she never had before, so I think she really liked it. Afterward we all went home and hung out, ate Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, made some yummy Christmas cookies, my mom got out all of her old family recipes she has collected throughout the years for my sister & I to copy/scan so we could use them for our families now. On saturday we got a Christmas at my parents house, went to the ACU playoff game, which ended up being pretty disappointing, then went to dinner, and came home to decorate the Christmas tree and hang out for one last night together.


All in all it was an extremely special weekend for us all to be together and get to hang out all holiday weekend long. Now we are all getting excited to see what Christmas holds for all of us...

That is all for now, sorry for the lack in blogging over the last couple months now that the holidays are here I'm sure I will be blogging much more. Stay tuned for some Christmas blogging coming up next...