Christmas 2012

Wow!  What a great Christmas break we had this year.  Vince, Evan, and I left on the Sunday morning before Christmas to head to Spring Hill, Florida. It's typically a 9 1/2 hour drive, but with a baby, it took us about 11 hours.  That's not too bad.  Evan is a good little traveler. He did not sleep as much this time, but played well.  We stopped every few hours and changed and fed him. He finally reached his limit and cried a lot the 30 minutes before we arrived.  He was just tired of being in the car.  That was the only melt down he had.  We stopped and changed him and he did fine the rest of the way.

We had 24 people at the house on Christmas Eve.  Kim and her family, and Billy, rented a house down the street.  My cousin DeLeigh was able to join us this year and stayed at her brother, Jim's house.  So my parents' house was not overly crowded with sleepers.  It worked out great.  We had lots of food.  We ate finger foods and Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets on Christmas Eve.  The kids all got to open one gift, which was their Christmas pajamas. 

We had Christmas at 7am so 23 of us were there at 7am.  Uncle Hank was picked up that afternoon for our Christmas lunch.  All of us had a spot to sit in, and our stockings set out. It somehow all worked!  Everyone had a fun time.  It was mass chaos and wrapping paper was everywhere.  We ate quiche for breakfast.  And we got lots of pictures, especially with Evan and each of the cousins.  These are in no particular order from the week.

 Evan got his very own Elf on a Shelf.  Vince named him Mr. Handy.

 Jim had brought party poppers and we each pulled one open.  A gift and a paper hat was in each one.

 With 24 people in the house, we had quite a number of Christmas gifts under & around the tree.

 

Vince, Evan, and My Christmas stockings.

Evan got lots of great gifts: child's leather recliner, toys, clothes, ornaments, and some feeding items. I got a new phone case from Vince, the Flo bobble head from Progressive, soaking bath solution, an edible spray paint system, and lots of nice stocking stuffers.  When I got home Vince got me a new printer and programmable thermostat, and blue tooth for my cell phone.  One of the things I got for Vince was a knife he saw at a craft show in TN.  He also got a nice suit from my parents. 

We ate our traditional Christmas lunch and had left overs for dinner. 

On the day after Christmas, the guys went to the gun range.  Evan and I went shopping with Kim and a few of the teens.  Evan got to ride his first carousel.  It was two levels! That evening, we went on a dinner cruise with Rachel & Pat.  Rachel & I had given them the cruise as part of their Christmas gift. It was really cold, but it was a nice cruise and the dinner food was really great.

On Thursday, Vince helped John work on the spark plugs in his van.  We watched Kim's kids while she & John went out to eat that night.  On Friday, we had Elise's 14th birthday party.  I made her  a cake with a cookie sleigh on top. 

We then left to head to Aunt Wilma's house in Jacksonville, Florida.  We spent the night with Aunt Wilma & Uncle Jack in their mansion.  It was huge. It was built in 1975 and nothing has been upgraded since then.  It was all very retro and very large.  I loved the size of the kitchen.  They are also building a beach house in St. Augustine so we went by the house to check it out as well.  We ate at a great restaurant in downtown St. Augustine called Barnacle Bill's.  Uncle Jack fixed us a great breakfast on Saturday morning.  We left to come home and got back to our house by 7:40pm.