The Christmas Spirit

Two little kiddos ready for some Christmas fun!

Our family picture in front of our Christmas tree.

My parents, sister, aunt, uncle and cousins came over to our house the Sunday before Christmas for our celebration.  We met at Babe's for some delicious chicken fried steak (and Clayton was the odd ball to get fried chicken).

On Wednesday, we began our adventure to Austin to spend Christmas with Clayton's family.  We stayed at Nathan and Delana's house with a total of 6 adults and 6 children!  It was a crazy house, but it was great for the kids to get to spend so much time together!

Camille and Asia are the only girls so they have to stick together sometimes...or just join in on all the sword fighting and wrestling! 

On Christmas Eve we Bubbie and Papa had one gift for each grandchild...PJ's!

They have a pretty good looking group of grandkids!

Just the boys!

Christmas morning was SO MUCH FUN!  Santa brought Eli and Camille their very own chairs with their names on them and stockings full of goodies!  Here are four of the grandkids coming downstairs...one can't walk so he got first peeks and the other was too fast to get into the picture.

We had a great time in Austin, but we really missed Papa!  We were there from Wednesday to Sunday and he was sick the whole time!  He had strep and ran fever the entire trip!

2009 Ornaments

One tradition that our family has always had is to always get new ornaments each year to add to the tree.  When I got married, my mom gave me an entire ornament box full of ornaments that had been given to me over the years.  I love going through these each year!  Here are the new ornaments that were added to our tree this year!

For the past 3 years, we have received one of these personalized ornaments for our family of 3.  This is our first family of 4 ornament from my mom.

These are Camille and Eli's ornaments from my parents.  The back sides are personalized with their name and year.

I picked up these cookie ornaments for Camille and Eli.

Eli's 1st Christmas ornament

Camille's pine cone ornament from Wee School

Christmas at Wee School

Camille is still LOVING Wee School!  I am loving my schedule this year that allows me to come to your class parties!  At their Christmas party, they decorated cookies, made bead wreaths and bead candy canes.  Camille is a great listener at school and is great at walking with a bubble in her mouth and hands behind her back...it's so cute!

At her very first program, Clayton and I made a huge mistake!  We didn't having the video recorder charged!  I can't believe we don't have it on tape and the pictures we took weren't even good...we'll do better next time!  Her class was the angels and they sang,

"One little, two little, three little angels,

four little, five little, six little angels,

seven little, eight little, nine little angels,

ten little angels are here!"

She did great and was the only one to give a bow afterwards!  Since then, anytime we make a big deal out of something she does, she asks to take a bow.  She is a character!

Our first airplane trip

In December, Heather and I earned a badge of bravery for deciding to take our three children all the way to Albuqurque!  We took a 3 year old, 1 year old and newborn through airport security, onto the airplane, sat next to strangers, battled wiggles on the plane and carried diaper bags, backpacks of goodies, and a carseat AND still made it to our destination...the Hicks' home!

Horton was a lifesaver for Camille!  She loved every bit of the plane, got to sit next to the window and never once mentioned her ears!  For Eli, my only plan was to nurse him while taking off and landing to help avoid any discomfort for him.  On our departure flight, I sat next to a man while trying to be as modest as possible in the tiny little airplane seat and nurse Eli next to him..a bit uncomfortable!  On our flight back to DFW, the seat next to us was empty!  It was great...still no tears of discomfort!

We were so sad in August when our good friends moved back to their home in Albuqurque, NM!  We just couldn't stand it anymore and had to go out and visit that sweet family!  Mylie was one of Camille's very first friends!  I wondered how they would react when they saw each other again and it was so sweet!  They ran to each other in the airport and gave the biggest hugs!

Whitney was an absolute wonderful hostess!  She had our rooms all planned out to wear Eli and Maci each had their own crib, had borrowed an extra car so we could actually go places while were here, she made a delicious breakfast on Friday, supplied us with diapers and wipes so we didn't have to pack them, got an extra little heater for our room because it was a bit chilly the first night and had made great plans for us!  We couldn't have asked anymore of her!  She was great!!

Now, I didn't document this trip as well as I had wished, and looking back I know why!  We had our hands full!  I wish I had taken more pictures of the flight, but I didn't have an extra hand to take a picture with!  I also wish I had taken a picture of us all packed in our CARS when we had to go somewhere.  It literally took a good 10 minutes to get all the kids bundled and buckled up in the cars!

One day we spent 4 hours at a children's science museum that the girls loved!  I think the girls favorite part was the huge bowl of bubbles with huge bubble wands to play in!

Eli slept the entire trip to the museum!

Our last night in Albuqurque, we went out to dinner to have realy authentic New Mexican food!  It was delicious!  It was very cold the entire trip, but we still bundled the kids up and walked down from the restaraunt to see a huge Christmas tree that had been lit the night before.

3 Months

Our little man is 3 months old and we are having so much fun with him! 

On December 1st (2 months and 3 weeks) he weighed 14lb 8 oz and was 25 in long!

He is sleeping in his crib every night and still waking up 2 or 3 times during the night to eat.

He loves to hold his hands together.

He loves his thumb!

I'm growing more and more fond of the thumb idea because he is great at soothing himself to sleep!

He gets his skin from his mommy and has really bad ezcema!

He has the cutest smile ever!

He has gotten very good at controlling his head and lifting it when having tummy time.

He loves to talk and smile most when on his changing table.

He loves bath time...I don't think he has ever cried during a bath!

We love you Mr. Eli!