Christmas 2013 - Phase 2

This year, as every year, we made a trip down to South Texas before Christmas Day to celebrate with my side of the family. We decided, for some misguided and unknown reason, to travel down Friday night so we could have all day Saturday and most of Sunday with family. But first, we had to pick up Aunt Ashley from the airport! She flew in from California for a long stay over the holiday and rode down with us to South Texas.  I don't remember now why she didn't fly directly into Corpus Christi - but I'm sure she regretted not doing so. Let's just say that travelling in the evening was not the brilliant idea it seemed to be. In my mind, the kids would sleep the whole way there. Silly mama.

We finally made it down and spent the night at Lolo's house. We got up the next morning and made the short drive to Mathis to play with cousins and spend time with family. While we were there the kids decorated cookies and spent some time playing outside.  As you can tell from the short sleeves, the weather was unusually warm for December 21st. We opened gifts that afternoon and Aunt Kelley stayed true to form and got my kids unnecessarily noisy toys. That they love and play with all the time. Stinkers. One of the boys (maybe Allen or Breydon) got a puzzle sphere that was quite difficult to master.  Just about everyone in the house took a turn at trying to figure it out. Here are some pictures from the day.

Fast forward a few days to Christmas Eve and Jimmy's family came up to the house. This year was extra special for me because Finity flew in from Denver to spend the holiday with us. We had a full house for a few days, but it was a fun time and the kids of course got way too many presents. This year Santa brought Nathan a guitar like Daddy's so they could play together. It is still a little big for him, but he enjoys strumming it while it sits on the stand.  His favorite gift this year was the kitchen that Popo and Momo got for him. He loves to pretend to cook and make coffee for everyone except Mommy (I get tea). Lolo got him a Sesame Street set that he also still plays with pretty much daily. Here are more pictures. I feel like most of them are just slightly blurry, which is probably because a certain 2 year old got a hold of my camera and was taking pictures and putting his grimy fingers on the lens....but we can't be sure.