Chrismas 2007

Happy Birthday Jesus!

We had a wonderful Christmas!!

As always, Noah was the first one up, but he was nice and let the rest of us sleep. On a normal weekend, when he gets up, he goes to the bathroom, and then to the computer room - he closes the door and either watches TV or gets on the computer, or plays some video game. Well on Christmas morning, he did the same thing, only he kept going to the bathroom, coughing and loudly clearing his throat trying to wake us up. He didn't know that Brian & I were laying in bed listening to him and laughing. Finally he noticed we were awake, so it didn't take long before he was in Kade's room telling him Santa had been here.

The boys had a blast opening all the awesome gifts!

We all got great gifts, but the favorite by far was the family gift of a Wii gaming system. Our living room has been re-arranged and everyone has been in on the action. Noah loves the Smackdown vs. Raw game, and Kade is a kick butt bowler.

So, from our family - - - Wii wish you a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve at Granny & PawPaw's

Our Christmas Eve tradition at my mom & dad's house starts out with taking family pictures. After the stress levels are all up, we all go to Church and regain our sanity. We go a little early, so we can listen to and sing traditional Christmas songs before mass. After church, we head back to Granny & PawPaw's house, to change, eat, and then start the chaos of opening gifts - put 22 people in one room with tons of gifts. . . chaos!! But at the same time a lot of fun - watching the little ones get so excited when they open one cool gift after another.

I love it - a lot of family, a lot of fun, and a lot of food :)

Mom & Dad

Donnie, Bernadette, Nicolette, Juliette, Angelette

Diane & Ronnie, Brooke & Adam, Beau & Courtney

Denise, Brian, Noah & Kade

Danette (with her Godsons - Beau, Kade, Conner, Noah)

Debbie, Louis & Conner (Cody wasn't with us this year)

Christmas at MoMo & PoPo

We had Christmas at MoMo & PoPo's house on Saturday, normally we have it on Christmas Day, but Katelynn & Katarina won't be here, so we did it early. As always, a fun time was had by all!

MoMo & PoPo prepared a great lunch, after eating, the kids couldn't get the table cleared off quick enough, so they could get to the presents. Opening gifts was a lot of fun. Watching the kids faces is priceless.

MoMo & PoPo gave all the kids an air hockey table so there were games going on all evening.

Quotes from the boys:

Noah: opening gifts was awesome, we like every gift we received

Kade: I like my Dale Hart (Earnhardt) Jr sleeping bag, and Max & Ruby DVD and all my other presents too.

Katelynn is a Teenager

It's hard to believe, but our niece, Katelynn turned 13 today.

Cody's birthday

Our nephew, Cody turned 14 earlier this month, so this weekend when he was down, we gave him his gifts and sang to him (good thing we had cupcakes) :)

Cup Cakes

While some of our family was out and about this weekend, I kept the kids. To keep them occupied, I made cupcakes and let the little ones put the frosting on - well Rina and Kade did, but Conner had other ideas :) although he did like putting the sprinkles on.

It was a lot of fun and when we brought them to Granny & PawPaw, no one cared what they looked like, they were mmmm good.

Rina is 9

Our niece, Katarina turned 9 today!

PoPo & MoMo took us all out to eat to a great new restaurant, then we came back to our house for yummy ice cream cake and gifts!

Photo with Santa

When we were in WalMart today we heard they had free photos with Santa. Kade wasn't too sure if he wanted to go, and Noah said he didn't really want to either, but when we got over there, Santa asked Kade what he wanted for Christmas - an Aggie Football? Kade said yes and hopped right on his lap, so I made Noah get in there real quick, and within minutes we had this cute photo . Obviously we weren't prepared to take pictures as they were not appropriately dressed.

St Nick

The boys were excited (and tired) this morning to find that St Nick did leave them a little something, but he also left them a note that he's watching them and knows that they are good boys but have been misbehaving, so they need to work on that so they can get presents at Christmas.

Christmas photo out takes

It's always fun to try and get a good picture for Christmas cards, especially when you have a 3 year old clown. Here's a few out takes . . .

A beautiful site

We had out first big frost this morning and 32 degrees. It was such a beautiful site to see everything covered in frost (except for the plant I forgot to cover).

Christmas Is In The Air

We put the lights on the house and put the tree up yesterday, so it's beginning to feel like Christmas, only now, we're just waiting on the weather to feel like it. It's 83 degrees out there today, but I think it's supposed to cool back off this week which will be good.

Brian & I went to Victoria yesterday and almost finished all the shopping - it's a little hard to do in one day when you have 2 boys, 16 nieces & nephews + 2 guests, 4 parents, 4 adult gifts (we draw names on both sides), then there's grandparents, Godparents, & teachers - but we put a big dent in it and I'll finish up within the next week or so.

While there, we picked out our perfect tree, went home and started the trimming. The boys started out strong, but gave up real quick, leaving my sister & I to finish. I think this is the biggest tree we've ever had - I had to bring out additional ornaments, and bows, and add some ribbon - but I think it's beautiful. And my favorite thing of all is walking into the house and smelling that wonderful scent of the Christmas tree.

The Countdown Has Started

The boys have their countdown to Christmas started.

When I was growing up, a neighbor for my parents gave us a gift that was a countdown to Christmas, it had 24 candy canes tied to it, and everyday after school we would run in the house and take our candy cane off and know we were one day closer to Christmas - we loved it.

So now that I have my own family, I looked and looked and finally found these cute Santa & Snowman countdown to Christmas, so I hope this will be as special to them as it was to me.