Christmas in Houston

Finally after all the traveling, our family was in Houston together to celebrate Christmas.  My sister and her family were with us in spirit and came the day after Christmas.  We had a couple of days before Christmas to finish up shopping, play, and hang out.   On Christmas eve we all got dressed in our Christmas outfits and went to a candle light service at Mom and Dad's church.  I've always loved candle light services and I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  After the service we went back home, ate some excellent Gumbo made by Micah, and took lots of family photos.

Once photo's were finally finished it was time for our Christmas eve traditions.  We start with a reading of the Christmas story.  This year, I put together verses and handed out verses to everyone in the family including Bailey.  Coleton felt left out so I made him his own ticket too!  When we finished the true Christmas story, the kids sat around Papa while he read "The Night Before Christmas".  When the story was over, the kids opened their gifts from the Aunts and Uncles (so it doesn't get lost in the madness on Christmas morning), and one gift from Nana and Papa.  Of course this gift is always a Christmas ornament and some pjs.  Finally, Coleton sprinkled some reindeer food in the yard and set out the milk and cookies for Santa and it was off to bed to await Santa's arrival. 

Christmas morning we had our traditional sausage balls for breakfast while we all sat around the tree opening our gifts.   It is so much fun to watch how excited the kids get to see what Santa brought.  Of course, Jake isn't quite old enough for that yet and he didn't really get the concept of opening gifts.  I ended up opening most of his and he enjoyed them more later when he was actually able to play with them.

The rest of Christmas day was spent hanging out together, eating an excellent Christmas meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, and dressing, sitting around the fire, playing Christmas Charades and finally watching "The Christmas Story".  Now this was a big year for me because this is one of my favorite movies but it was Bailey's first year to be allowed to watch it.  She claims she liked it but we may never know the truth since she would never admit to not liking a movie her Aunt Stephanie loves. 

Late Christmas day, my niece Nicole and her two kids also came to visit and stay a couple of days.  Her babies are Eden and Elias.  

The day after Christmas, Dad had booked a cruise of the Houston ship channel for the family.  The cruise was fun and nice to do something different even if a bit cold out on the deck.  We hoped to make it by my Dad's plant but we turned around just before getting to the plant.   After the cruise, we went to a cool restaurant on the ship channel.  It was a fun day out!

At last, Selena and her family decided to join us and of course we had to take more family photos.  This time none of us were really prepared for photos and we had all been outside playing so it's a little more of an eclectic assortment of attire.  We also opened gifts which even though the siblings had agreed not to give each other gifts, I had made Selena a surprise quilt.  Also, since Selena was here it was time for the girls to take the pj pictures.  

Now that we all have kiddos and its getting to be a lot of gifts to buy every year, we decided this year for the adults to do a Dirty Santa exchange with a $10 maximum.    I made sure to explain that this would be "Adult Only".   We had some fun gifts exchanged and I think everyone had a lot of fun.   The gifts included: emergency toilet paper, "Bad Ass" hot sauce, a Yoda that sits on your computer monitor, a snowball shooting gun, authentic New Zealand possum fur covers for a certain area of the body, Chick-fil-A calendar, Christmas themed male undies, and a movie that was an inside joke for Chad and Selena.  We had lots of laughs stealing gifts from each other.  It will probably become a yearly tradition. 

The rest of our time together we mostly just played outside, enjoyed watching the kids run around and play, ate, played a few games, and just in general enjoyed being with family.  It was a fabulous start to Christmas festivities.