Merry Christmas!

It was another busy Christmas whirlwind of events for us this year. It starts on Christmas Eve when we travel to Waco to spend time with my dad, then back home for our own Christmas Eve, then Christmas morning at home with Tyler, Christmas brunch with Travis' family at his aunt's house, Christmas dinner in Bastrop with all of my family, and then we do Christmas with Travis' parents the day after Christmas. Throw in the time to make food/goodies to bring to all of these events, travel time to get to each place and a two year old who misses naps and it makes for an exhausting three days! We feel lucky to have all of our family close enough to see during the holidays, but I think we'll need to come up with something to simplify things as I imagine it will only get harder with having our little girl here and us wanting to spend more time at home doing Christmas activities with the kiddos. That all being said, we did have a wonderful Christmas and it really was great spending time with all our family. As an added bonus, we managed to spend time with one of my high school best friends, Kelli, and her family while they were visiting from Florida. Tyler received sooooo much great stuff that he absolutely loves and I'm sure we'll spend some time exchanging out some old toys for all the new ones that he got. For such a busy schedule and seeing so many people, there's not a ton of pictures to show for it.

Christmas morning at our house~


























Poor thing was beyond exhausted and passed out as soon as we left Travis' aunt's house to head to Bastrop~


At Mamma and Grammy's house~






Even baby girl got some cute clothes for Christmas~


At Grandpa Bill and Grandma Dale's house~




Family Christmas picture~


Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Christmas Eve at our house

After a long day in Waco, we headed home to do our own Christmas Eve thing and get ready for Santa's visit.







Before I got the recorder, Tyler was singing 'Jingle Bells' and 'Santa Claus is coming to town' while getting ready for bed. :-)


Santa DID come....




And Daddy missed the entire thing while passed out on the couch!!

Christmas Eve in Waco

We spent Christmas Eve day in Waco with Poppa and Peggy like normal, however, this year was special because we had a mini family reunion as well with some family members that I haven't seen in probably 15 years. I can't believe how much I've slacked (just gotten lazy!) in taking pictures and didn't snap one single picture of everyone together. Hopefully, we'll get together more often now and I'll have other opportunities. I did manage to get these few...

Tyler wasn't sure about Santa Claus stopping by to visit. Love how Travis is pushing Tyler towards him, but he wasn't having it. He could have cared less if he got that present or not!


Showing Tyler that Santa isn't so scary.






And after he opened the first present, he was willing to see Santa for more. ha!

Cookies for Santa

Now that Tyler has a good understanding of Christmas and Santa Claus, we decided THIS would be the year to start baking cookies for Santa. We always left cookies for Santa when I was younger (although I never remember making anything from scratch or making an entire day out of baking), so I'm looking forward to starting this tradition with Tyler. The truth is, up until a few weeks ago when I decided to do a trial run, I had never made cookies from scratch. Crazy thought now. It's not nearly as intimidating as I imagined. Anyway, despite Tyler and I both not feeling well (he was recovering from croup while I had a nasty head cold), we managed to whip up some fun in the kitchen! Tyler actually assisted in all the baking (and taste testing, of course!) and he did a great job!! Santa specifically requested some peanut butter cookies from us so that's what Tyler spent the most time on. We made peanut butter kisses, cake balls, melted snowman cookies and sugar cookies. And I should note: these were for Santa and NOT his reindeer, according to Tyler. Not sure what he has against poor Rudolph. :-)

Christmas shhh... NOT!

Our funny Christmas memory this year: Tyler and I went shopping at Cabelas for Daddy's gift and I let Tyler play the deer shooting game while we were there. He was a little excited about that and later told Travis that he was out shooting reindeer (haha). Daddy: 'You were shooting reindeer? Wow. Where did you shoot reindeer?" Tyler: "Cabelas." Daddy: "Really?! Did you get Daddy a present at Cabelas?" Tyler: "Yes!!" Daddy: "What did you get me?" Tyler: "A hook!" Little stinker! I don't think I'll be taking him along while shopping for Daddy in the future. :-)

Lazy evening

It must be nice to not have a care in the world.... to lay around by the fire, drinking hot chocolate and watching Christmas movies. ;-)