I'm going to finish up our adventures in December!! On the Eve of Christmas Eve we went out looking at Christmas lights in a nearby neighborhood. We've made this a family tradition and have done it for the last few years. We love it! It isn't JUST looking at Christmas lights in the car. It's looking at Christmas lights while riding in a trailer hooked to the back of the car! Mom and Dad stay in the car while the kids ride in the back. We usually bring music and TONS of blankets, hats, gloves, and scarves. Fortunately this year wasn't as cold as the previous years. It was cold, but a bearable cold. Some years we had our faces wrapped with scarves with just enough uncovered so that we could see the Christmas lights. It's such a fun tradition and I hope we continue to do it every year!! This year we brought Lenny and Rosco, all the kids and their husbands (minus Stephen) and Emily brought a couple of friends. How did we all fit in that little trailer?!??! Let's just say we all got REALLY friendly! ; )
Rosco turned the music off multiple times during the night. Crazy dog!
Here's a picture from Christmas 2 years ago. It was freezing that year!! O.k. As FREEZING as Texas can get! ; )
Christmas Eve we wrapped LOTS of presents!! This wasn't even all of the presents!!
Here's a new Hallmark ornament we got for our tree this year!!
Here's my favorite purchase made in San Antonio the week before Christmas. This fits Spence and I VERY well.
Later Christmas Eve we went over to my parent's house. We all got pajamas from them, which is another awesome family tradition!! We changed into our pajamas and played pictionary with the family. Boys vs. Girls. I'll let you figure out who won that one! Spence and I slept over at my parents so we could go to their ward on Christmas morning. We had church bright and early at 9a.m. Church was awesome! We had a special visitor with us. Richard G. Scott was in our ward and got to bare his testimony at the end of the meeting. Such an amazing spirit there! You could literally hear a pen drop when he was up speaking.
After church we got to go home and open presents and eat breakfast! Nick's family has a family tradition where everyone gets to do a scratch off ticket. So we all got to do those this year also! We won $14 all together on our FIRST round. Spencer had the bright idea of going back to the gas station and using the $14 to buy more tickets for everyone. To make a long story short we continued making trips to the gas station ALL day on Christmas day. I'm not kidding. I think Spencer's last trip to the gas station was at about 9 or 10p.m. that night. It lasted probably 6 or 7 rounds until ALL of the money was gone. It was fun! We love the new tradition!
My parent's tree this year was huge! Here's Spence standing next to it:
Christmas morning after church:
haha..recognize this?? I thought it was appropriate since they live in Florida but were married in Houston, TX!
BEFORE everyone did their scratch offs!
I think Em won $8 on her first two tickets.
I think this was our second or third round of tickets:
After Christmas presents and scratch offs we ate breakfast and did my birthday presents!! I'm so blessed and SPOILED rotten!!!! My parents got me a cake decorating box to organize all of my cake decorating supplies. And they gave me some money to fill the box! : ) Actually the money they gave me was to help pay for the Canon camera I was wanting to buy. Little did they/or I know that Spence had bought me THE freakin Canon Rebel T3i!! I had been wanting one but DEFINITELY was not planning on Spencer buying one for me!! I am spoiled to death!! He knew I somehow ALWAYS find out what my surprises are! He hasn't been very successful in keeping things a secret so he can surprise me. I either pick out the presents myself or somehow find out what they are. NO, I don't cheat and look purposefully for them. So he wrapped a picture of the camera with a little note to me and filled the box with heavy paper. It definitely didn't look like a camera! I opened it and read the note and saw the picture but didn't believe that he had bought one for me!! I was in shock! BUT, SO EXCITED!!!! The camera was still at our house in his car so we left my parent's and went to go get the camera. It came with a camera backpack, a memory card, and a UV filter. SO, Spence has successfully pulled off a surprise. I really had NO clue he had bought the camera for me!!! He even had it shipped to his parent's house so I didn't see it in the mail! I'm so excited to take pictures!! Here are pictures of Christmas/birthday gifts! (P.S. yes, I'm a Christmas baby!!)
Here's after we ran through the rain to go get the camera out of Spencer's car! I was SO excited!! On our way to get it I just kept looking at Spencer with a huge smile on my face!
SOOOO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!! Thank you Spence!!!! I love you!!
Look at this baby!! SO shiny!!
Spencer also got me a sewing machine for Christmas! Did I say I was spoiled???
The next pictures are taken with my new camera!
Lenny had a new friend this Christmas. Rosco wouldn't leave him alone, EVER!! Look at that death stare!
Then Grandma Kunkel came over.
My dad made her a sweet bird house!
We got to Skype our missionary in Arizona for a couple of hours!! So fun!
The dogs saying hi.
Family picture!!!!! : )
More family came over while we were Skyping with Stephen. We had dinner/lunch and did my birthday cake after that. My mom and sisters made my cake. It was so cool and HUGE. They had to reconstruct parts of it because it was so heavy the cake started leaning.
Look how HUGE one slice of cake was!!
SO GOOD!!!
We were going to play Minute to Win it but we couldn't get enough games and materials together so we ditched the idea and played Guesstures.
You never play this game without a laugh! If you don't own this game, YOU SHOULD. : )
This is what we did the day after Christmas:
SLEPT...
AND slept some more.
Christmas present from Amy and Nick. SO CUTE!!! I guess we both had the idea of looking at each other's pins on Pinterest.
Here's the tool caddy from my parents. I was quick to fill it!
A couple of days after Christmas we were able to have Christmas over at the Sevy's because they were back from Destin, FL where they spent Christmas this year. We opened presents and had lots of good laughs. We also went out to dinner for the annual Maggiano's stuff-your-face-fest (YUM). They also gave Kristy and I cookies for our birthdays.
It was an awesome holiday! It's so sad that they are over and it's back to reality!! I'm excited to get familiar with my new camera and start some sewing and cake projects. It's a rough life! ; )
I definitely have more posts to come. Stay tuned.
~Nat
