I’m still catching up on December…

Christmas!

Christmas at Brad’s parents’ house.

My beautiful niece, Tayler, with my little peach.

Georgia opening a little bunny from Aunt Kara and Uncle Andy.

Christmas Morning.

There is no way the maniacs could come out of their room and not see all of their goodies, so we have to hang something up.  We have a redneck tradition of hanging (with duck tape) my old Strawberry Shortcake sheet in the doorway, so the kids can’t peek before we wake up.   Then we make them wait on the other side of the sheet while we “check to make sure Santa came.”

Love the cheeks!  Love the wrinkled little nose!  Love the total little package!

My big girl loves the same things that I love…and I love her!

Lilly Katherine is taking art from my friend, Carrie.  She did a self portrait, complete with the “side pony” she had given herself that day.  I framed it for her for Christmas, and she was so excited.  I’m so proud of her artwork, and I think she did a fabulous job!

LK also got a tea set, and the girls have loved it.  They had a tea party as they were waiting on me to cook lunch.

My maniacs on Christmas morning.

I took 39 pictures – THIRTY NINE to get the above picture!  It’s still not great, but they are all smiling and looking in the direction of the camera.  Most pictures look like the one below.  Georgia was trying to bust into the M&Ms.  Lilly Katherine was leaning on AnnaLeigh.  AnnaLeigh didn’t like it, so she, of course, was elbowing LK!  Preston just wants them all to straighten up and hurry with the picture.

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Then we went to my parents’ house and continued with the festivities.

Laurabeth and Georgia.

Me, My sister and Laurabeth, My mom and Georgia, and my wonderful, crazy grandmother, Memama.

My entire life, we have taken a picture on the stairs on Christmas morning…and we still do.

Memama and Georgia

In the middle of all the wonderful family time, it started to snow.  I’m not sure we have ever had snow on Christmas, so it was a beautiful surprise!

Caleb and Truett were opening their big gift, and my two big girls were ready for the action with their new cameras.  Maniacs!

Okay, so I HAVE to tell you about this HILARIOUS game that my sister-in-law, Kara, gave Preston for Christmas.  It was the funniest game I have ever played!  Well, I didn’t actually play it.  I watched and laughed until my cheeks felt like they were going to fall off.  I haven’t laughed this hard in a LONG time!

It’s a Jelly Belly game called Bean Boozled.

That little box of Jelly Bellies is a game. 

It looks normal, but you spin the spinner and you land on a jelly bean color.  You choose a bean that corresponds to the color you spun and you pop in in your mouth…but you don’t really know what you’re going to get.  Your bean will either be normal and delicious or HORRIBLE!

If you land on yellow/white speckled, you are either going to be eating caramel corn or MOLDY CHEESE.   If you land on Orange and Brown speckled it is either Peach or BARF!  And it really tastes like barf!  Or so I hear.  I can say that their breath SMELLED exactly like what they ate.  There is a dog food one that made me gag it smelled so much like canned dog food

I’m telling you if you have kids…especially boys, or daredevils or nephews…it is the funniest thing in the world!  I wish I had more pictures of people laughing, but I was laughing too hard to take pictures!  It made our Christmas so much fun this year.

The kids LOVED playing…as totally disgusting as it was.

Preston was all talk…until it was his turn.

I’m thinking it was not the good flavor!

We were all laughing so hard we were crying!

The next day, my brother came into town, and the kids convinced him to play.  It was still hilarous!

My brother brought his sweet little 5 week old baby, Brinley, for her first Christmas!  She is getting so big already, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to pass Georgia up soon!

The 3 baby girls in our family that were born in 2012!  Such special cousins.

My mama and sweet Brinley.  Oh she looks so much like her daddy!

And finally New Year’s Day!

Our tradition is to get together on January 1 to have brunch and celebrate the New Year and also Preston and AnnaLeigh’s birthdays.

I love our annual pancake picture!

I gave Preston a “9” and AnnaLeigh a “4” for their birthdays.  Preston thought his was a “P” so his is backwards.  Oh well.

Yay!  I’m caught up!   Caught up on the blog anyway!  I have so much laundry to do that I will never be caught up there!

Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!

and

Happy Monday!

-kate

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