Catching Up......

Wow, life has gotten the best of my blogging days.  I'm not sure if I've said this on my blog before, but a friend of mine and myself have taken over our Children's Ministry at our church...and I still have my full time job taking care of my kiddos, hubs and house.  So needless to say, life has been extremely busy.  So please don't be overwhelmed by my tons of posts the next few days.  Christmas 2012 was a lot of fun for us! The kids really understood the true meaning of Christmas and seeing that was amazing.  Also seeing them react to having Santa visit them was so much fun too. I love seeing their faces light up and be excited about the fun gifts that they were given.  Since we left for Texas on Christmas Eve Eve, we had Santa visit the kids a couple days early. This was our first Christmas having a Christmas with just our family.  It was fun and calm.  We had the entire day to just play and enjoy all the new gifts that the kids were given.  Sunday, we headed to church for our Christmas Eve service, even though it was Christmas Eve Eve :) After church we headed home and had to finish up packing.  For that evening we were heading to the airport and leaving for TX for two weeks.  We started our Texas visit with Layne's family.  We got to Texas LATE on Sunday night and all the Christmas festivities started promptly on Monday.  We celebrated Christmas with Layne's mom side of the family that day and then opened gifts with his sister and her family that evening. IT was crazy! It was a long day...especially since my kids were still used to East Coast time....so opening presents at 8:30 was like opening gifts at 9:30...and they had gotten up super early that morning.  Poor Ryleigh had fallen asleep and we had to wake her up to open more gifts.  I think that was the first time she wasn't too excited about opening gifts.  But her lack of excitement didn't last too long.  She finally woke up and got excited about what she received.  The next day was Christmas Day and we headed over to my parents house. We got to open up gifts with them as well as my brother.  Of course after opening their gifts they had to open up pretty much all of them so that they could play with them.  Luckily, it's easier to open up the gifts to pack them since we had to travel back to MD with all their new gifts.  Finally, the day after Christmas (Wednesday) was our last day of celebrating. On Wednesday we celebrated with some brunch and hanging out with Layne's dad's side of the family. We hadn't seen some of his cousins in a really long time, so it was nice to catch up with everyone.  The rest of the two weeks was a lot less eventful.  It was nice to have some down time and also time to catch up with friends. We were able to just spend some quality time with our family while down for those two weeks. I'm so glad that our Christmas was so successful this year :) 

 On our Christmas Eve, the kids got to pick out one gift and open that.

 This was Brynna's first experience with opening gifts...she wasn't too sure about it all

 Love these expressions of Ryleigh opening her gifts...she was so excited about pretty much all her gifts. She's such a sweetie!

 Grammie and PawPaw bought the kids a new trampoline since we sold the one we had in TX before we moved.  The kids were SOOO excited about that! Too bad they didn't get to jump on it until we got back, but they've done their fair share of jumping since we put it up.

 Brynna and Aunt Steph getting reacquainted and talking to each other about what's been going on. :)

 Noah and Ryleigh playing puzzles together

 Doing a little bit of painting with cousins

 Ryleigh LOVES this little puppy! She carried her all over the place. I'm pretty sure she wants one at her own house :)

 Trying to get Ry to wake up so that she can enjoy opening up her gifts

 His most fav gift! His Avenger set!

 This is the after....after 6 grandkids open their gifts from Nana and Pop

 Loved getting new cowgirl boots from Grammie and PawPaw!!

 Cousins :) Love and miss them!

 Ry and Abigail-cousins...and finally a girl cousin to play with :)

 Most of all the Laughter Cousins...missing 2, plus their spouses

 Ry wearing a dress that Aunt Steph wore when she was little

 While at my parents house, I got to go on a motorcycle ride with my dad. It was a lot of fun and the first time I had ever been on one.

Me and My Princess on my birthday. I had a great time with family on my 30th birthday. Took my kids to their favorite bounce house place...played and bounced with them, went to lunch and ate Tex Mex, then went to a family fun zone with our family to do some more celebrating and playing with my kids. Then to end the evening, my sister-in-law and I went to see the second part of Breaking Dawn.  Great way to start my 30's....loving all my family that on that day!