Catching up. . a Christmas recap!

Well, I have clearly fallen behind on my blogging.  That's okay, though.  I am doing it for my own memory preserving more than anything.  I do understand now, though, how one falls behind.  Before, when I was just a blog reader, I would find a blog that interested me, and then get disappointed when they wouldn't post very often.  "How do they NOT have something to blog about?"  But, now I get it.  Other things take precedence :)

There are lots of things I want to post on, but rather than going in chronological order, I want to start out by posting about our Christmas in Tennessee.  It was so fun to be with my whole family again for the first time in a year and a half.  We were there for about a week, and got to do lots of fun things.  As the girls get older, it feels like things get easier and, hence, more fun.  In fact, even though the drive is 16ish hours, I would say the girls did better than expected, especially since we drove straight through.  They read to themselves a lot, ate pretty well, and didn't complain much.  We were so thankful! 

Here are some pictures of the fun we had:

Painting the presents.  Here Sally declares, "I painting the head, Mommy!"

baking cookies with Abuelo

snuggling

Sally and Aunt Betsy

Eating snowman doughnuts from Krispy Kreme

Amelia and Josh- *Explanation* According to tradition, we all get dressed up in our pj's late at night and make a trip to Krispy Kreme.  The last time we did this, I was too little to notice all the funny looks we got from other customers.  But not this time! Funny and priceless:)

my mom- Abuela

Had to include this pic of Sophie for Amelia.  We always say Sophie looks like Amelia, but here she is holding her tongue just the way Amelia used to.  Isn't that funny, Pea?

more snuggling

The girls watched Winnie the Pooh over and over in Abuelo and Abuela's room.  They have fallen in love with it.

Other than that, we also had a mini birthday party for Sally at a frozen custard place, which included a group performance of the hokey pokey, lots of game nights, cooking lots of yummy food, a shopping day for me, my mom, and my sisters, a golf day for the guys, seeing Les Miserables (so good!), and lots of gift giving.  One funny story about the girls:  While waiting to open presents, we sent them to their play area while we read a Christmas story together as a family.  The girls were visible to us, but kind of far away.  I noticed that they seemed to be having a lot of fun, and so went to check it out.  They were indeed!  They had found a full carton of eggs, and had broken every last one to create their own slip n slide in the middle of the floor.  We pulled out the video camera and got some good clips of them having fun in the mess and telling us about it.  Not something you'd want to happen, but we got some good laughs out of it.  Overall, it was a great Christmas!  I just wish we all lived closer so we could do those kinds of things more often.