Christmas Traditions

Making gingerbread (or graham cracker) houses. Addie was quite in tune to her sense of style while decorating her house. Maycie was more concerned with getting the candy in her mouth than with putting it on her house.

The 3rd annual Abbott, Smith and Macdonald Christmas get together. We continued our tradition with our dear friends, the Abbotts and Smiths, who we consider our North Carolina family. The first 2 years we gathered on Christmas night for a "family" feast. This year, since we were leaving town Christmas day, we did a Christmas Eve dinner - homemade Cafe Rio. Yum! The kids got to decorate cookies for Santa. It was total Christmas chaos! We love you, our North Carolina Family!

Christmas Eve watching Mr. Kruger's Christmas. That movie always makes me cry!

Opening Christmas Eve jammies!

Mom got ambitious this year by making all the kids their jammies as well as Christmas dresses (forgot to take a picture of the dresses). They were a hit. I think we'll keep this tradition.

Opening stockings Christmas morning.

Addie must have been a good girl. Santa brought her Littlest Pet Shop.

Maycie's favorite toy were the kittens (stuffed, of course).

Always encouraging the athletic side. Swoosh! Nothing but net, baby. Way to go Alex!

Since mom and dad will NEVER (hold me to it) do real animals, and the kids are constantly begging, we compensated with the next best thing. Look at that gorgeous horse. The girls also were overjoyed with little puppies from Grandma Mann, kittens and Littlest Pet Shop. Now we have a who house full of pets without the smell, noise or clean-up.

Christmas Night at the Car Rental

THE TRIP FROM .... (you know where)!
We were thrilled when we found killer deals on plane tickets 6 months before Christmas. I had a vision of all the family from across the country gathering for a long over-due reunion. It was definitely worth it once we got there, but we paid a price- beyond the money.

I thought a plane trip with 3 kids and 2 parents would be relatively easy. After all, I'd done it several times before all by myself. However, the flight gods were not with us. The first leg of the flight was fairly non-eventful. It's always a headache transporting 3 children and 6 carry-ons through security and flight transfers. But, the final 5 hour flight to Las Vegas was disaster. Almost as soon as we took flight Maycie unleashed the diarrhea monster. I spent the next 5 hours running back to the bathroom with her during a very turbulent flight while attendants yelled at me to get in my seat. Not once did we make it in time. I got very creative with Maycie's outfits. I used a T-shirt for her skirt. Once that was soiled, I used her blanket for a skirt. Then we went bare bottom. By the way, I should mention that I don't like to draw attention to myself on planes so I was trying to hide the situation from my agitated neighbors and flight attendants. Please don't ask why I didn't just put one of Alex's diapers on her. I can't, for the life of me, tell you why I didn't. Finally, Maycie exited the airplane wearing a navy blue Delta Airplane blanket for a sarong. I, however, was not so lucky. I was sporting poop all over my jeans. Not that I really had the energy to notice. During all this, Rob was dealing with Alex who was screaming incessantly. Except for the kind couple next to me who kept smiling like they sympathized, I'm sure everyone else exited the plane promising to buy first class tickets next time, no matter the price.

We then loaded our very tired and ornery children and a mountain of luggage onto a shuttle to the car rental place. After a few more diarrhea incidents and another couple of hours of confusion sorting out the rental, we squeezed ourselves and bags into the car. I was so looking forward to unloading at my mom's house, but due to a severe snow storm we pit stopped at Rob's Aunt Carol's in St. George where we got a couple of hours of sleep before finally making it to our destination. I'm tired just reliving it. Merry Christmas. Need I say more?