It all started with a bang on Saturday, December 20th. We woke up late, packed the car, left the house off schedule, then took a wrong turn amounting to an hour-long detour...finally we arrived in Waco for dinner with Jan's side of the family. Afterwards we went to the Carpenters' house for the gift exchange. We spent that night at Kate & Ryan's house. The next day we drove down to Liberty Hill where we celebrated Matt's 27th birthday on Monday. He had birthday waffles, and had to hold the "blowing" pose extra long since Jan's camera was slow. After breakfast we opened our gifts.
Monday evening we headed to Abilene to spend the next few days. I took Dad and Matt out for a 7 mile run on Christmas Eve. We all made it! Then, to ensure we had enough exercise, Dad took us all (my siblings and cousins) to play "wallyball"- basically volleyball inside a racquetball court- at the Air Force base. That night we had our traditional Christmas Eve sweets & snacks feast and a nice Advent service.
Christmas Morning we broke with tradition by sleeping in until 7:30. Then we opened gifts (thanks again everyone!), ate a late breakfast, and the women commenced cooking for the Christmas dinner.
We had a great time, and despite Morgan's brief illness, the trip went well. We were, however, very happy to be back in our own beds on Friday night!

Midland Children's Museum

On Wednesday we took the kids to the children's museum for the first time. They have a huge train set on display for Christmas. It was pretty amazing. Then in the main exhibit, the have the play grocery store and all the rest of the stuff that all children's museums seem to have. Both of the kids had a great time. Emma found a baby doll to carry around and also wore a Batman mask for awhile. Morgan accumulated every piece of fake pizza he could find.

Bundled Babies & Cookie Decor

Temps have been in the twenties for a few days, so the kids haven't been able to go outside much. But yesterday I bundled them up for a short excursion. We lasted about 10 minutes...
Also included in this post are a few photos of the cookie decorating session we had last night.




Feast your eyes on these little beauties...

Emma approves!

Christmas Cookies

The babies helped us make Christmas cookies last night. It was Emma's first time. She was a little contrary, as she usually is about things. She always wants to do things her own way... Morgan tried to eat a lot of dough, but Emma had to be convinced to try it. I think she thought it was play-doh.
After the cookies baked, we all enjoyed the fruit of out labor along with cups of hot chocolate.

Birthday Portraits

We got Morgan's portrait taken at Sears today for his birthday. He was really working the camera, smiling, saying cheese...all the shots turned out great. Here are the best ones...

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

Morgan is officially 3(!) on Monday, and we celebrated in style yesterday. I made the cake for the first time which went better than I expected. Lots of Morgan's friends, new and old, were in attendance. He had been looking forward to his party for months, so thanks to everyone who helped make it a special day.



Despite appearances, we were not serving wine yesterday :)

My Curious George creation...

Morgan digs in to the much anticipated dessert.

Thanks for helping, Mom!

"Aunt" Jaclyn and "Uncle" Jose

The Brayton family...

Morgan unwrapped a camping set...

...and a CD from Memaw...

...and an illustrated Nicene Creed, because honestly, why not?

Emma even got an piece of the action.

We weren't able to get a photo of everyone, but here are the Smith kids (a party all by themselves).

Pepaw and Morgan in the new frog tent (Morgan enjoying a chocolate treat for his 1st successful poop on the potty- just FYI)

Daddy taught Morgan to operate his first remote control car (thanks Grandma Motz!).