Christmas 2007 - Whew!

Here is a picture we took with the auto shot feature! Not too bad! Christmas Eve we were thrilled for the festivities to begin! We began our evening with a candle light service at our church. It was amazing. They had an actual ice patch on the stage and two girls ice skated while the choir sang. Then it ended with candles being lit from the stage across the whole church. It went from a single light to hundreds in minutes. It was beautiful. A single light lit was the soul source of the hundreds finally lit. Very powerful! Well, Santa had only one gift to put together on Christmas Eve. After my stockings are filled they never stay on my stocking holders. So they ended up in the kid's car for safe keeping until the morning.
The remaining gifts were all wrapped up! I love the suspense of the kids opening their gifts.
The first glimpse of Christmas morning. 5:30 AM! The best part is after all the gifts were opened HC said "Well, there is one more thing." Hubby and I thought 'no there aren't anymore gifts!' and HC said "NOW we need to go outside and see if Santa brought our SNOW!!!!!!!" We walked out with the video camera in hand and searched high and low for snow. We even had to check the neighbors yard! JB finally said "I don't think Santa brought any Snow for us sister!" JB's big gift was this train table. After visiting friends and noticing their kids' train tracks and trains everywhere.... we decided that JB may be best suited to start with a train/car table that cannot have key pieces lost. :)

Here is his table with the top on it. JB can use the table top for building blocks or whatever!
HC was beyond thrilled to have her Barbie house! She was delighted!! This one was a 2 hour job for dear old Dad!! He heard "Are you done yet Dad?" at least 100 times! :) Oh the joy! Outside driving the new wheels!! It has been so cold lately!! I love it!

Then on December 26th, we woke early in the morning and headed for Houston. Of course, Hubby drove since HC can drive well in a circle and JB crashes into everything! WE thought that Dad was our best bet! We arrived at about 6 pm and opened MORE presents!!! Here is JB playing with the guitar HC received and HC was playing JB's keyboard.

Here are my kiddo's with Uncle Michael. Grandmother aka 'Mudder' and my Mom aka 'Nana' are in the background.
JB checking to see if he and PopPop are doing the same pose still or not.
Here is Grandmother and Grandfather (JB renamed him Godfather). They eat lunch everyday at this Whataburger and wanted to take us so they could show off their family. It was a fun lunch.
Later that evening my Uncle and his family arrived. So all the Grand kids took a picture with Grandfather and Grandmother. My two were the only Great Grand kids in attendance. My brother Michael's wife "Uncle Jill" as my kids call her is pregnant. She is the first female on the left. She is due in April! We cannot wait! We were only missing my other brother and his family to have everyone together.

Here are my Grandparents with my Mom and her brother and their spouses. Later that night my brother and sister decided we should all get away alone. We headed off to Chili's and had a fun time being silly, like kids. My parents were on babysitting duty. We took full advantage of their services! ha ha! So below is (from left to right) my baby brother Michael, his wife Jill, my sister Stephanie, me and my husband Steve. After our grub we headed back to my parents to play a little Wii Bowling! I can't wait to get a Wii!!! We had soo much fun!
The next day we had lunch and headed to visit family in Baton Rouge. Uncle Michael is really tall and he toted HC around in this plastic chair. She was scared but thrilled!
We arrived in Baton Rouge around 5 pm and then the kids played and ran around with their cousins. They took the mattresses off of the beds and pushed them together. They put their sleeping bags on the mattresses and slept on the floor. What a fun time they had NOT sleeping and giggling!! Nothing better than kids laughing together.

The next morning we were thrilled to meet the newest addition to our family. Here is Beau! What a cutie he is! Can't wait to see what personality he will bring to the table!!

The kids played a little hide and seek. I caught them all switching out who would hide and who would seek. The hiders would remain under the table while the seeker would count and pretend not to know where they were hiding. After much needless seeking they would finally find the others. They giggled and laughed so much! Truly fun times! (Pictured below is Lauren, JB, and HC) JB was dressed cute too but had a few accidents on this day. I guess all the traveling and activities were too much for him to remember to go tee tee too! This was his first go of accidents in weeks! Oh well, he still had fun!

HC, PawPaw and JB
HC, Mimi and JB!
My husband's brother, sister, and Hubby!
Here are all of the cousins playing together with JB's train set he received from PawPaw and Mimi!

Overall our trip was super fast but we had so much fun at both of our stops! It was so fun to see the kids play together. Such a rare event! The boys later went out to play a little football together. I have that on video. I hope to share that vlog with you another day!! We miss you all and cannot wait for our next trip! Much love!!