Merry Christmas from the Family

This year we stayed in Texas for Christmas. Our first family Christmas started on Saturday, Dec 21 at Carol's house. It was great to see all of dad's side of the family and Tucker loves hanging out with Marlowe and Erika. Somehow, I didn't get any pictures of us being at Carol's house, but it was nice to be there.

Our second Chrismas celebration was on Tuesday, Dec. 23. My aunt and uncle have a steak house that is closed on Tuesdays, so we had our celebration there. We have about 30 people on mom's side of the family and about half of that are the great-grandkids, so it is nice to be in a place that we can all stretch out...The open bar was nice too! John ended up being the bartender most of the night and he seemed to like that little gig! I don't know if Harold and Sandra will keep up the tradition of letting us have the run of the steakhouse, but it was certainly good while it lasted! We tried to get a picture on the stairs of Grandmama and all of her great-grandkids. I think that we have them all except for Eleanor, but photoshop can solve that problem. :0)

We had a traditional turkey and dressing meal along with our tamales that we made the night before. Yummy!

Our third Christmas celebration was smaller with only Dad, mom, Tucker, Grandmama, John and me on Christmas eve. Dad cooked a beef tenderloin. While dad was cooking Tucker designated him as the "Fry Cook". It was another fabulous meal and I am pretty sure that I am packing on the pounds at this point. Tucker finally got to open his presents from Peaches and Papaw (He had been begging to open presents since we arrived on Saturday!) He received lots of clothes, Spongebob legos, and Star Wars for the Wii with light sabers. We had to immediately set up the light sabers and playing the Dueling Light Saber game. Very fun!

Since it was Christmas Eve, it was time to say goodbye to Peaches and Papaw so that we could get home and get ready for Santa to arrive and give my parents a break.

Once we got home, we opened our own presents to each other and then we got ready for bed so that Santa would come and see us.

One Christmas day, Tucker came into my room upset that Santa hadn't come. (I think that his little heart must have skipped a beat.) He thought that Santa would leave his presents under the Christmas tree. However, I explained that Santa usually leaves his presents by the fireplace (which is in a different room in our house), so Tucker hurried down to check out the family room. His little eyes just lit up as he took it all in. I think that he was also a bit relieved that Santa actually did bring gifts this year! It was so much fun watching him flitter from one gift to the next and hearing him ooh and ahh over his new toys. I thought that it was funny to see him playing his Guitar Hero instruments in his underware like on the commercials, so I had to get a picture of that. :0)

I really don't think he knew where to start first! Merry Christmas Little man! Oh, and then he remembered that the Toothfairy was also suppose to visit, so he then had to check out his Toothfairy pillow. So much to do!

Our last family Christmas celebration ended at my brother's house with his family, my family, and mom & dad. We had a nice lunch and Tucker was able to play with Eleanor and Nick for the afternoon. Whew!

We then took mom with us so that she and I could get up the next day and the after Christmas sales. (Our family in Canada calls it "Boxing day.") Friends and family think that we are crazy, but we have a lot of fun seeing what bargains we can get. I think that we have been shopping the day after Christmas for about 15 years now! We were out the door by 5:00AM on Friday morning heading to the mall. We ended up not needing anything, but getting more Christmas decor and wrapping paper to use for next year. My stuff went directly from my trunk to the attic.

Well, our marathon celebrations are now over! Now it is time to get ready for the New Year.

So Merry Christmas to you and hope you are having a fabulous New Year!

Hot Tamales

Dad loves to make homemade authentic food. He has been known to make his own sausage, picante sauce and sauerkraut. For a few years now, we have been trying to figure out how to make tamales. We have made our own fair share of tamales, but we it is still a work in progress. Each year, we seem to learn something else that makes them even better. This year, we had some family over to the lake house to make more tamales. We had pork. Kyle and Amy brought over chicken. We then started the assembly line. Kyle and I put the masa on the cornhusk while Dad and Amy stuffed the tamale and rolled it up. Mom was in charge of the steaming. It is a long process to put everything together and I am begining to think that buying them would be the best, but it was fun to be with some of our family and work on this project together. I think that we finally finished with 12 dozen tamales completed. We did a few little taste tests, but we didn't get to really enjoy them until the next day when we got together for our Christmas party.

The North Pole Express Video

Here is the video of our train ride in Grapevine.

The North Pole Express

I am trying to catch up from all of our Christmas adventures. Here is a recap of our Dec. 20 train ride....

Every year, Peaches and Papaw take us to some kind of Christmas play, musical, usually at Casa Manana in Fort Worth. This year we decided to ride the North Pole Express train in Grapevine. Tucker's cousin, Eleanor, came along with us too. It is sort of a take on the book, "The Polar Express". We saw lots of kids and even some adults in their pajamas running around. They have a little "village" set up around the train depot where you can watch a blacksmith at work. He made a horseshoe with Tucker's name on it, which Tucker thought was really cool. We were able to talk with Santa and make an ornament inside his workshop/giftshop. Before we boarded the train, we sang Christmas carols with a few hundred of our closest friends. Once we finally boarded the train, the ticket guy came around and punched our tickets. We sang more Christmas carols on the train and then Santa showed up again! Eleanor and Tucker sat together on the train and loved every minute of it. Not sure what we are going to do next year, but we now have a year to figure it out. Check out the video above for pictures of our train ride!

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy

What are the chances that Santa and the Tooth Fairy have to visit us on the same night? It is 100% at our house! Tucker pulled his second tooth this evening while watching TV. So, we will be getting 2 sneaky visitors tonight while we are sleeping. Yikes! Tucker says that it is ok because Santa is in charge of the Tooth Fairy anyway and that she may be tagging along to speed up Santa's big job of spreading toys to all of the families. We are now missing our two front BOTTOM teeth. I need to share the "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" song with Tucker now.
Hope you all are having a fabulous Christmas Eve!

Christmas Fun

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Baby, It's Cold Outside

From Dec 2008

We even thought Willy may need to bundle up for his walk since it was so cold last night. Little did we know that it was going to be COLD and drizzle a little bit overnight. I was surprised (and a little bit excited) to get a phone call from work at 5:30 am to let me know that school was going to be delayed for 2 hours. Woohoo! So I settled back into bed to watch TV and read for the next hour or so. At 6:30 am, I then get another phone call explaining that school was now CLOSED. What the heck happened? Now, I am concerned. I don't mind coming in late, but I didn't want to waste a bad-weather day this close to our Christmas break! What in the world I am going to do with Tucker all day long?
Well, we have been trying to stay busy and keep from driving each other crazy. I did some laundry and cleaned the house a little bit. I then got into a cooking mood and decided to make peanut brittle. I have already made 2 batches, but the third time was notta good. This is microwave peanut brittle and evidently a hot glass bowl full of peanut brittle batter and cold granite counter tops DO NOT work together. As soon as I took the glass bowl out of the microwave and set it on the countertop, I heard a "crack". The bowl cracked all the way around about half-way up the bowl. At this point, foaming brittle is leaking out. (I thought about getting a picture, but had my hands full at this time.) I grab the top of the bowl, but since it is broken, the bottom half with the brittle stays. I yell for Tucker to get the trash can and we slide it all into the trash. Oops, plastic trash can with plastic garbage bag inside! I guess you figure what is happening now. Yep, piping how brittle batter is now melting the trash bag and getting all over the trash can. What a mess!
About 3o minutes later, the mess is cleaned up and I am determined to "get back on the horse again." I start making batch #4 of peanut brittle. This time with a hand-towel covering the granite so I can put the bowl on a warm spot. Everthing turned out the 4th time and I am now enjoying a little bit of peanut brittle as I type.
Tucker has been busy helping me and creating new messes for me to clean. Finally this afternoon he settled down to watch a little bit of TV. This is the most quiet the house has been all day... Just don't let those closed eyes fool you; he isn't really asleep. It isn't often that I can get both boys in the picture at the same time. :0) Just a couple of more hours and John will be home. Whew, it has been a long day!

From Dec 2008

Christmas Cookies

My favorite part of the Christmas season is cooking all of the goodies. Making fudge, decorating cookies, eating it all! When I married John, I found out that his mother has a tradition of making and decorating German shortbread cookies and no-cook chocolate balls. They are so pretty and yummy! Heide's cookies are truly a tradition that I look forward to. Once she shared the recipes with me, I turned it into a tradition of my own to make with Tucker. So, this year we spent Sunday afternoon baking and decorating the shortbread cookies. Once I made the dough, Tucker helped me roll out the dough and use the cookie cutters. He quickly got tired of that and just decided that he would do the decorating once the cookies were removed from the oven and had cooled off. Once we were ready to decorate the cookies, I made a little spread at the table with red, white and green sugar sprinkles, chocolate chips, and different colored frostings. This is Tucker's favorite part. He used a paintbrush to "paint" the frosting on the cookies and then heaviled sprinkled the cookies. His cookies were as beautiful as ever and even yummier in our bellies. I love our cookie traditions!

That's Disgusting

Today is John's birthday. Tucker and I woke him up this morning with "Happy Birthday" hug from Tucker and a kiss from me. I guess Tucker didn't really like me kissing John because once we started walking downstairs, he gave me a little nudge and started whispering to me. "Mama, did you just kiss daddy?" I replied that I did. He gave another strange look then whispered, "on the lips?" Once again, I replied that I did. Tucker then said, "Just because it was his birthday, right?" Once again I nodded. Thinking that the conversation was over, Tucker then exclaims, "That's disgusting!"

First one

Tucker has had a wiggly bottom tooth since Thanksgiving. Evidently, today was the day for it to come out (or get pulled out). He said that he was playing during recess at school and the tooth/gum started bleeding. His teacher sent him to the school nurse where she assisted him in pulling out the tooth. They put it in a small container so that he could get the tooth home to get ready for the tooth fairy, but somehow the tooth is now missing. Are you surprised? So, he pulled his first tooth and lost it all in the same day. He was so excited to tell me about his day when I picked him up after school. I was excited with him...a little sad that he didn't pull his tooth at home with me, but a little thankful at the same time. I am not sure how I would handle the whole tooth pulling ordeal! Looks like he has another tooth starting to get wiggly, so we may have tooth number 2 coming out soon. Now we have to write a note to the tooth fairy to explain the missing tooth. What is the going rate for a tooth from the Tooth Fairy these days?

Gingerbread Man Pictures

Gingerbread Man

Tucker and I carried on our tradition of making a gingerbread house this afternoon. It is a full day project because you have to put it together in sections then let the icing dry. It is hard for Tucker to have the patience to work on the house, but he manages by eating the candy and frosting as we work. He picks out the house that we are going to make and then we do our best to copy the picture. Tucker is a pro at decorating the house with the tiny bits of candy and gumdrops. He likes to make patterns with the colors as he puts the candy on the house. I am not allowed to work with the candy, I am strictly the frosting person and the rest is up to the little man. Now that the house is complete, Tucker has informed me that it needs people. I guess we now have a plan to make gingerbreak men tomorrow night.

The slideshow above were taken while we were creating our masterpiece.

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Now that the house is back in order, Tucker and I decided to "deck the halls". He and I put up our stockings and Christmas tree with all of our favorite ornaments. Tucker loves to look at each one and remember a story behind it. He actually has several ornaments that are his favorites and puts them front and center on tree. I love looking at the ornaments that he has made during his years of daycare and preschool. To me, they are the most beautiful of the bunch! I hope he never outgrows decorating the Christmas tree with me, at least not any time soon!