Christmas(es) 2012

Believe it or not, I really did narrow down the pictures, like a lot.  There are still a ton.  But we had a lot of Christmas-ing to do!

December 22:
We did Christmas with my parents and brother's family..  Here we are doing the annual cookie decorating.  We had to wait until Christmas Eve (two whole days!) before we could enjoy the cookies.  Killer.  They have to sit in that magical golden tin you see in the picture.  It makes them melt in your mouth delicious!

Group picture!

Opening presents...

Cousins!  Noah, Alexis, Easton and Ellianna.

December 23:
We decided to do Christmas with our little family on Sunday afternoon after church because we were SUPPOSED to be gone on Christmas day.  More on that in a moment.
Crazy smile from Elli!

After we took some pictures in our church clothes, we changed in to our comfy clothes and opened gifts.
Sister loves to imitate me when I get ready.  I was able to find her some fake, wooden "make up".  She LOVES it!  It has a pretend compact, nail polish, blush and brush and eye shadow.   Such fun!

Lego Ideas book!

My sweet boy made us a present and cards at school.

A little something I got for Brandon and me.  :)

I got Noah a lap tray several years ago at the Affair of the Heart craft show, but haven't been in a couple years. I get these crazy ideas that I can be artistic (ha!) and decided I could just design one for Elli.  She thinks it's fabulous.

The gift Noah made.

Matching outfits!

Decmber 24:
Christmas with my extended family in Miami, OK.
This busy boy slowed down long enough to let his special great-grandma hold him.  Precious.

Ellianna's older cousin got a nail polish set for Christmas so Elli sat patiently and waited for my cousin Tiffany to give her a manicure, her first!  The highlight of her night, I think.

Oh my word.

All ten great-grandchildren!  You can see how successful that photo shoot was.  :)

All about their nails!

December 25:
We were supposed to get a white Christmas, how exciting!  We did not get a flake of snow.  It all stayed in Southwest Oklahoma.  All the snow was where we needed to go, so we ended up staying home on Christmas day.

I've never done a gingerbread house, but I saw these kits at Walmart and thought we'd give it a try.  I never got around to letting the kids do it before Christmas so it was a perfect Christmas day activity.  We had no idea what we were doing, but it was fun!  Elli ate more candy than she put on the house.  Doesn't our poor little house look sad?

We came back a few minutes later to find a wall and half the roof had fallen down and eventually the whole house collapsed!  

Playing with his new weird and wacky contraption lab.

December 26: The roads were fine and we took off for SW Oklahoma.  Brandon's dad and stepmom got Elli this cute little papasan chair.

Star Wars lunch box!

Aunt Khelsea humored Elli and put the gift sack on her head when it "started to rain"!  She's such a good sport with the kids!

December 27:
The next morning at nana and pawpaw's house, they finally got to play in the snow they'd heard so much about!

The microwave was frozen shut!

Cousins! Noah, McKenzie, Elli and Camden.

Star Wars Fighter Pods!

Camden brought his Wii and everybody had fun playing!  Noah loved Wii Sports Resort and the boys cracked me up attempting Just Dance4.

It was SOO cold that the kids didn't get to get outside to play much so Nana let us in to the gym at her school so they could burn off some steam.

This was good exercise for mommy and daddy!  So much fun!

Nana and pawpaw got Elli her first American Girl dolls.  Bitty Baby Twins!

Saying our good-byes before we headed down to Dallas for a mini-vacay with friends!