Packing it in

Packing the memories, that is. Anyone else feel like you were non-stop with Christmas events? There was some serious jam packed memory making these past two weeks. Justin's parents and sister came in from Kentucky. Now that they're retired it was nice change of pace and have a Texas Christmas. It felt so weird not packing, traveling, and unpacking during the holiday season. Although I was sad to miss a white Kentucky Christmas, it really was wonderful having a Christmas at home.

Since we knew that Santa wanted sugar cookies, we put Gram on that project Christmas Eve. We don't want to disappoint the man in the red suit after all. I was still worn out from our last batch of cookies.



Campbell hasn't quite understood the concept of making one impression with the cookie cutters. He usually made it with about 8-10 cuts into the dough.

Nolan loved it...every.single.lick



Christmas Eve ain't Christmas Eve without the candlelight service at church. Put a candle in my hand, sing some Silent Night and you might as well call me a blubbering idiot.



And for the first time since our wedding over eight years ago, both of our parents had dinner at my parents' house after church. I'm talking homemade-enchiladas-beans-rice-and-tamales-lick-your-plate style. One of my proudest moments to be Hispanic is when my mom can rock one of her homemade meals. Feliz Navidad, baby!


My parents have maybe two square feet of wall space that isn't covered with Christmas decorations. In fact, one year my parents' tree had so many decorations on it that it fell over. As if that wasn't funny enough, my dad held the tree for three hours for my mom to come home to help him.

 So you can imagine that my children think that going to Grandma and Granddad's house is the same as going through the enchanted candy cane forest by the North Pole. My dad's a giant kid when it comes to Christmas and completely lives vicariously through the boys with his love for trains...Polar Express style.

Since everyone was all dressed up when we finally made it home, we had to get a family pic. This is what we got...lovely.

After some laughing (and threatening) we finally did a couple of decent shots.

 

We had the boys open their staple Christmas Eve present that's always jammies. At this point, we're creeping past 10:00 and realizing that Santa still has a lot to do to get ready for the next morning. So the next five minutes included throwing on jammies, slapping some cookies on a plate, and Justin chunking reindeer food in the yard as the boys watched. Not exactly as low key as our Christmas Eve last year since we were snowed in.

And this is just Christmas Eve people. Told ya it was jam packed.