Merry Christmas

It's Katie's First Christmas!

And her dad had to work! So of course we had to make a trip to the fire station.

They really like each other:

I forgot Katie's bow and I was a little embarrassed about it. You would have thought that I brought her there naked. Hopefully nobody thought she was a boy!

My dad went with me, so we let him play pretend fireman on the fire truck!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! Sometimes it feels like we are celebrating presents, Santa, candy canes, snowmen, FUDGE!, and decorations, but it's Jesus's Birthday!

Happy Birthday Jesus! Thank you for being born to die for our sins!

That is something to celebrate!

Christmas Eve

My family does our Christmas celebrating Christmas Eve, because we just can't wait!

My sister was trying to make Katie laugh, but it worked better on me! (maybe in 2011 I can get rid of one of my chins!)

My parents with their grand kids:

My aunt and cousins:

It was so fun to have them all in town. They came from Colorado, Tennessee and El Paso!

My family is Italian, so we always have lasagna and pasta on Christmas Eve.

The kids table:

More of the kids:

It's so fun to see all the kids play together. My sister, my cousins and I would have the best time getting together every Christmas. So now it's extra special seeing our kids having fun together!

Well, maybe Katie can play with them next year.

This is my cousin, Kristen's husband, Kevin. He's not really a giant. He's just pretending to be one here:

And I forgot to include this picture from my Ice post:

Do you think Katie has her Grampy and Daddy wrapped around her teensie little finger?

I do!

Ice, Ice Baby

Have I ever told you that Vanilla Ice did a concert at my high school in 10th grade? We won a radio contest and he came during the school day. That is not what this post is about, but anytime ICE comes up, I want to sing, "stop, collaborate and listen..."

We went to see the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Resort. This year they did a Peanuts theme, so I had to go. I have a thing for Snoopy.

My aunt and cousins came into town, so the whole family went. I would be a terrible historian, because I didn't get pics of everybody.

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Marcus, me, Katie, Morgan and Ryan. (our niece and nephew). I think maybe we could have gotten a better background than the women's bathroom?!

My cousin Kristen, expecting Lucy in March, with her nieces:

We bundled Katie up, because it was 12 degrees in the exhibit!

Everything is made of Ice. It was really cool and COLD!

My cousin Stacey, with her son Marcus:

Me with SLEEPING Katie! I was wearing her and she got nice and cozy and warm, then just conked out. She missed the whole thing!

Good thing I took some pictures for her!

Thanks to my dad for buying us all tickets! I think we could have all flown to the North Pole for the same price!

Word to your mother

(another Vanilla Ice reference, just in case you weren't cool in the 90's)

Family Christmas

We celebrated Christmas with Marcus's family tonight, because he has to work on Christmas! :(

Some body's got to put out your fires, give you CPR, and get your cat out the tree!

Katie with her cousins, Jennifer, Melissa and Jeddy:

Marcus's mom with Katie:

Marcus's brother, David, and his wife Lisa, and our brother-in-law Jeff and Jeddy:

Melissa got an American Girl doll and she was so excited. It reminded me of the time I got my Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas. I screamed!! That was back in the day when you had to put on your combat boots and helmet to be able to shop for a CPK!

I like when Christmas lasts more than just one day!

Golightly's Party

My favorite Christmas party every year is the Golightly's employee party. For the last several years I worked in the tearoom a couple of days a week, so I was an employee. I stopped doing that before Katie was born, so I thought I was out on the party. Wellll, to my surprise I am still an employee since I do their blog! Yay for me!

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This year we had it at Janet's and all got to wear our PJ's or comfy clothes. That was so nice to not have to "get ready".

We always do lots of laughing at Janet's!

And she is SUPER generous! She got us all pedicure gift certificates and she gave me this sign:

I love it! I am kind of like Buddy the Elf in my love of sugar. So the word marshmallows can be interchangeable with anything sweet; m&m's, smarties, Coke...or marshmallows!

Is there sugar in marshmallows? Then, yes I like marshmallows.

Company

My friend, Tori, and her family made a pit stop at our house last night. They were driving back to Arkansas from Lubbock and our hotel had a vacancy.

Katie loved the attention from Avery.

Whenever I do a post about Tori, I usually have to make some snide comments about Arkansas. Like how it's great that in Arkansas Avery can marry her twin brother some day, or sorry we are not having squirrel for dinner tonight. Something like that, but since it's Christmas time I will not do that!

BUT I will tell you that Tori's brother just had twins too and they have 2 different birthdays!! Only in Arkansas!

Birthday Times 2

Today we went to Charis and Drew's first birthday party! Their parents happen to be two of our favorite people.

It was a Dr. Seuss, Thing 1 and Thing 2 theme, so cute!

Drew is using his manners with his smash cake.

And Charis was not!

Love it!

I had to get a picture of Katie next to Colson. Colson is Anna's newest baby. (She's one of favorite people too!) Anyway he is 7 weeks younger than Katie, but about 8 pounds heavier!

Isn't he a cute little chunker?

Katie got into her treat bag, and then fell asleep after being in the car for 2 seconds.

It was her very first "friend" party. She has been to lots of family parties, but those she has to be invited to. This was special!

I think she had lots of fun!

5 Months!

I have known this baby for 5 months and 1 day!

We haven't known each other that long, but we love each other a lot.

Today we went to the mall and met Santa. Then we went to Hallmark and picked out an ornament. That is our Christmas tradition...that we have officially done one time now!

This is Katie the day we took her home:

She was 7 lbs 5 oz. Now she is almost 16 lbs. So she has doubled her weight.

Thankfully, I haven't!

Katie is such a happy, laid back baby. She still gets me up every night, but I really can't complain. (but sometimes I still do)

That reminds me of something REALLY funny Marcus said the other day. He said that he wanted to go to bed early that night, because he hadn't had good sleep for 2 nights in a row and he was tired. WoW, 2 in a row?! Poor thing. I think he totally forgot who his audience was for a second. He quickly remembered when I started laughing out loud. That's better than punching him in the gut, right?

Christmas Tour 2010

I'm joining the Christmas tour of homes with the Nester and Kelly's Korner. You should too!

This is our first Christmas in this house so it was fun to do something a little different this year. I love Christmas! I usually start thinking about how I'm going to decorate the house for the holidays in July. This July I was having a baby and moving, so I was a little distracted.

This tree is in my dining room.

I like to use things I have already to decorate my trees. This one has my great grandmother's tea cups on it, some hydrangeas from an arrangement I had, and I also added some crystals from an old chandelier.

My Santa tree in my sitting room:

I sure can pile on some ornaments!

And here's the real Santa. He sings a few songs and dances like a maniac. He was a gift from my sister in law several years ago and I super LOVE him.

I super love Santa, but I love Jesus more. And that's what Christmas is really about.

Here's the tree in our living room:

It has lots of bright colors. I used that pillow above for my color inspiration.

Garland in the kitchen window. The lights blink, but you can't tell that from a picture. Just open and close your eyes really fast 100 times and you'll get the idea!

And my kitchen tree has always been my favorite, but there is not really room in this new house for a tree in the kitchen. So I just hung everything on the garland.

Here's Sully, Our Elf on the Shelf.


And here's Katie's room. This is her first Christmas and she's pretty excited about it.

She has a crib on the other side of the room. Were you afraid I just let her roll around on that bed?

Her tutu is the tree topper.

And I added some bottles, pacifiers and a paper garland to fill the tree up.

Christmas in our room:

My husband is a fireman, so we have to have a fireman tree!




Christmas in the bathroom.

Santa has a really long night and you never know if he's going to have to make a pit stop at your house. I think he might appreciate decorations in there!

Snowman tree in the guest room:

You don't have to have one million trees to celebrate Christmas. I just love it and think it's fun. I don't spend a lot of money on my decorations either. I get it all on sale or just use what I have. I can't wait to see how you decorate your house!

Happy Birthday Jesus!