2008 Christmas

This past Christmas (2008) was a whirlwind of fun-filled events. We started with heading to Rock Hill on Christmas Eve day to my mother's house and hung out for a little while and then headed to our church for the Christmas Eve service which was absolutely amazing as always!!! It was a little more eventful because we had Will and Emma in there with us this year (I decided that Will was old enough and would really enjoy the music and Emma was sick so Elizabeth decided to bring her in with us also) and Emma decided to come down the pew to sit with Rick, Will and myself and Will and Emma sure did have some fun together! After the service was over we headed back to my mom's house for dinner with the family. We had a birthday cake for Jesus which Will and Emma were so excited about when they saw it and got to blow out the candles! We want to make sure that Will knows the real meaning of Christmas and know that this is the real reason behind the celebration during the holidays. Santa Claus and gift giving of course is a lot of fun too! After dinner and cake my grandparents gave Will and Emma a gift (this is something that they used to do for all of us on Christmas Eve and wanted to do this for Will and Emma now): Will got a Spiderman bike helmet, which he was very excited about and Emma got a Princess tea set! A little while after this the phone rang and it was a phone call for Will and Emma from Santa Claus (my dad started doing this last year for Will and Emma and this was something that my dad and uncle did for myself, brother and sister and cousins years ago when we were young - a tradition that we loved and am so glad that it's being passed onto our children now!) and they were so thrilled to get to talk with him!!! Later in the evening Rick, myself and Will headed back to Blythewood for the evening and put Will to bed because we knew the next day was going to be a busy one for all of us!

Christmas morning came early (about 6:00 am) for us and we had a blast! Will got a bike, trampoline, fish tank and fish and CARS vehicles plus a few other things from Santa this year and was so happy about it all! He was a little upset when he saw that Santa didn't get him MAC from the movie CARS - it was the one thing that he asked for from Santa - little did he know that his uncle Kent had gotten it for him! :) I got Rick a digital camera so he'd have it for his trips that he takes with work, a Tom Tom so he could use while he's away on trips....seems to be a pattern here! :) I also got him a book called, Survive by Les Stroud, that he'd been wanting. He was very excited about everything! Rick got me a digital photo frame, which I absolutely love and a special pancake pan, which we've already used and it's wonderful!!! We had a wonderful morning together!

After we were done with our gift exchanges we got dressed, packed up the car and headed up to Rock Hill for the weekend! We went to my parents first and exchanged gifts with everyone and had a wonderful time just being together with everyone! After we hung out for a while at my parents we headed to Rick's parents and followed them out to his aunt Kathy's and uncle Rob's house for dinner which was delicious! It was nice to see everyone and enjoy the time together! We headed back to Rick's parents after dinner and opened gifts with them - they gave us some wonderful gifts as they always do! We spent the night with them that evening and the next morning got up and ate pancakes and played around for a while and then headed over to my parents for the day. We played around there for a while and then headed to Fort Mill that evening for dinner at my aunt and uncle's house. After leaving Fort Mill we headed back to my parents to spend the night.

Sunday we headed to church with everyone and then went back to my parents for lunch and spent a while letting Will and Emma play together and just enjoyed some more time together with everyone! We left later in the day and went back to Rick's parent's house to see them for a little while and packed up everything and headed home!

As much as I always hate leaving everyone it was very nice to get back home too!

It was so nice to have spread out all of these "events" over a couple of days because we didn't feel quite as rushed doing it this way and were really able to enjoy our time together with family!

I know that we had a an AMAZING Christmas and hope that everyone else did too!

These are some extra special pictures that I wasn't able to get a picture of on Christmas Eve but Elizabeth shared the ones that she took with me - it's the pictures of Will and Emma singing "Happy Birthday" to baby Jesus blowing out the candles to the birthday cake that my mom baked especially for baby Jesus - I cannot express in words how excited they were about this and these pictures make me smile every time I see them.