Christmas Eve was a busy one this year! Hitting up lots of family for fun, food, and fellowship. Lots of generations getting together!!
All the cousins! Less the boys...they were too busy shooting guns and playing golf. But the girls were more than happy to pose for a few pictures with their new goodies!
My beautiful Mimi! She has been hosting Christmas at here house for so many years, it's going to be weird when one day, we're doing Christmas Eve somewhere else.
The kids acted out the nativity story! Olivia even recited Luke 2:7-14.
Then we sang Christmas carols and lighted candles!
We had such a WONDERFUL Christmas!! We are so blessed!! The kids are at great ages (I feel like I say that every year) to really enjoy and understand the real meaning of Christmas!!!
The live nativity this year was extra special. It was such a tangible example of the birth of Christ! They loved it.
So did Rhodes. He rode his very first goat!
Then we looked a few Christmas lights.
I wonder what their electric bill was for the month of December!!
Our first Christmas stop was just immediate family. We took lots of obligatory family photos!
Gotta love test shots like these! ;-)
The girls!!
Then we cooked up a storm. Our classic Christmas dinner is cooking a turkey, homemade sourdough rolls, leseur peas, mashed potatos, and a couple of other casseroles!!
While the food was cooking we played a little dodge ball!!! SOO much fun!
I wanted to plug my sisters blog. She has some pretty funny stories about our weekend. And videos. :-) You can see some out takes of us trying to get a good pic with Audrey (their yorkshire terrier) and Robert pulls out some pretty cute noises to get her to look our direction! And the kids limbo too!
My cousin and her husband are over in China for a year doing some AWESOME things over there. Can't wait to hear all about it since they can't really discuss it over any type of communication effort....if ya know what I ;-)
But we miss them so much and can't wait for them to get back to the US!!!
Since it'll be the first Christmas without seeing them at all, we decided to try and Skype with them during our family's Christmas dinner.
It's a thirteen hour difference so around 7:00 p.m. we tried to contact them.
I tweeted to my cousin that we were trying to skype and gave them my brother's Skype i.d. And within 30 minutes, SHE RESPONDED!!!
We connected and got to chat with them, got a tour of their apartment and even got to introduce Rhodes...well, she's seen pics but we held him up in front of the computer! haha
Keith (her husband) and I pulled out our cameras and took some pics!! At least they will be in some of our Christmas family pics!!
You can see Lacey, Walton, and I in the bottom left-hand corner! :-)
They had just gotten out of bed....GOOD MORNING!!! ;-) And we were about to eat dinner.
Rachel blogged about it HERE and put our pic up! We almost got everyone in. Rhodes' head just barely missed the shot!!! But he was in my arms!
How cool is that!!! Technology is incredible!!!!!
Miss y'all Rachel and Keith!!!
Video of our conversation!!! ;-) Nothing like a bunch of first time skypers!!!
I think I had a little too much fun last weekend. You see, I don't get out much. And I really don't get to get out much all dressed up, alone, and surrounded by my family!
We had our annual THE CLUB Christmas dinner. We've been going here since I was 4 or 5 celebrating December birthdays and Christmas. All the cousins really look forward to it!
We dined.
Danced. Well, I actually didn't make it on the dance floor this year. :-( But it was fun to watch everyone.
We were silly.
We viewed the city!
We took lots of pictures!
We even peeped in on the wedding reception next door. ;-) But that's all I'm sayin' about that!
All the cousins! Less the boys...they were too busy shooting guns and playing golf. But the girls were more than happy to pose for a few pictures with their new goodies!
Then we sang Christmas carols and lighted candles!
