Celebrating the New Year in Texas

We rolled into Texas on New Years Eve, checked into our hotel and then headed over to Meg's parents house in Wylie for a family get together. We were excited to all see each other and have a good time catching up!

Sister Love!

We rang in the new year watching the ball drop- actually that's not true, we were on the wrong channel. Haha, New Years is slightly overrated, but we still had fun just hanging out together.

Poor Blake was tired from our long day and made it as long as he could :)

The next morning on New Years we all got together for breakfast and our Christmas gift exchange! Everyone was generous and had nice gifts, and there was something for everyone. We had a fun time together!

Afterwards, Daniel and Meg had some wedding things to take care of, so the rest of us went out to lunch at a barbeque place.

It's a good thing we were practically the only ones there since my boys needed a place to let some energy out. 

They even had free ice cream cones for a treat! 

 

Actually, this was Blake's lunch. And I thought it was so cute how even though he has a cone he preferred to eat it with a spoon. 

After lunch, a few of us went shopping and then we went back to the hotel so Blake could rest and so Jacob and I went for a walk. He really wanted to go swimming but I showed him the water was just too cold!

I played around with my new camera and took some shots of him in the Courtyard. And then I walked him to the gym where he had fun working out like his daddy.

That night we all grabbed a quick dinner and then all the boys went out with Dan for a bachelor party and all us girls went to Meg's house and watched a movie and ate lots of snacks. And my parents and grandparents got to stay back and play with my boys. I regret that I didn't get any pictures of us girls but it was good for us to spend time with Meg and we had a lot of fun the night before the big wedding day!

Pit Stop in Albuquerque

For the week of New Years we were headed to Dallas for my brother's wedding, but we decided to add a couple days to our vacation and first make a stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit Luke's college friend Clay and his wife and daughter. We took off on a Sunday after church and made it to their house that evening.

Our Christmas

We started off our Christmas celebrations by first attending Jacob's first preschool performance. His class did a Christmas program during the Thornton Winterfest and sang five holiday songs- Jingle Bells, Up on the Housetop, Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. It was pretty cute!

We also walked around and found the Christmas tree of ornaments all the preschoolers made and enjoyed the other things they had going on there.

Christmas Sunday I failed again in getting cute pictures of the boys together, this was the best I got. Blake was being silly and even putting on the stockings while I was trying to take their pictures. Oh well. 

Jacob wearing his Santa hat getting excited for Christmas.

Christmas Eve we went downtown hoping to see some Christmas decorations but didn't really find anything to look at, so we took the boys to the park since it wasn't too bad outside. They had a lot of fun having their dad to play with them, and it was good to just spend time together that day. 

 That evening we had a nice Christmas Eve dinner, read our traditional Christmas stories and scriptures, played our rice pudding game (I won) and let the boys open one present.

The boys loved their new superhero pajamas, and then we watched a movie before bedtime. 

 

Jacob was very excited about the idea of Santa this year- it's fun watching his excitement grow every year. A few days before Christmas though he was very upset and worried that Santa wouldn't bring him anything though. When he sat on Santa's lap he only told him that he wanted cars for Christmas, and Jacob was worried that it wouldn't be enough haha. But he was very excited Christmas morning and after opening his gifts he kept saying "This is the best Christmas ever!" I think Santa brought him everything he wanted after all :)

The boys got spoiled with plenty of toys this year and they spent most of the day playing and watching their new movies- their favorite is Despicable Me 2. Jacob's favorite toys were his Monsters University set, and Spiderman action figure, and his Sheriff car, though he said he loves all of them. Blake got tons of new trains that will keep him happy for a long time. Luke got a smoker cookbook, and a new restaurant style fry slicer among other things, and my big gift was a new camera. Can you tell these pictures now are much clearer than my previous iphone pictures?! I'm glad to have a real camera, and a good one at that, now I just have to learn how to properly use it! We all got some great gifts, we feel very blessed.

We had another great Christmas dinner and enjoyed the evening spending more time together. I love having Christmas with our little family and the traditions that we get to participate in every year. I love the excitement that Christmas brings to our kids and I know next year that will increase even more as they are getting older. I'm grateful that we were able to have a nice holiday together but sad that the season went by way too quickly this year!