White Christmas

Christmas was a little different for us this year...OK, it was a LOT different! Normally we travel to Clifton or San Angelo for Christmas to be with Brent's family or with my family. However, since I had a C-section exactly 2 weeks before Christmas, travel was out of the question, so we had a quiet Christmas as a new family of four.

On Christmas Eve, we had family portraits taken at JC Penney and it started snowing as we were heading there. ( I will get the pictures at the end of the first week of January and will be sharing them with you then. I can hardly wait!!) The snow was really coming down hard as we headed back home and this is what our yard looked like that afternoon.


I thought that I would be VERY sad and lonely on Christmas morning, but instead, it was Christmas Eve that was so hard for me. I started crying after getting off the phone with my aunt, who was playing games with everyone at her house. When Brent asked me what was wrong, I couldn't come up with anything to say other than "I want to be playing games with everyone" and then I was crying hard enough that I couldn't say anything else. It seems strange that Christmas Eve was the day that was so hard for me. And it is even stranger that I was so upset after getting off the phone with my family, because this was a year that we were supposed to be with Brent's family. But, regardless, I was sad and missed being with our extended family altogether.

We had planned to find a Christmas Eve service to attend in The Colony, but with the weather so cold and icky, we decided it would be best to stay home with the new baby. Samantha got to open one present from us on Christmas Eve, this was her Elmo pajamas and slippers. If you haven't been able to tell, Elmo is just about Samantha's favorite anything, so she was very excited to wear Elmo to bed that night as she snuggled with the stuffed Elmo that Memaw gave her the weekend before.




On Christmas morning we found that Santa was actually able to find our house, even though he had never been there before.


He brought a "bicycle" and filled Samantha's stocking. He also brought some Sesame street friends to keep her Elmo company.



Samantha loved the doll stroller and swing that she received from us and was happy to play with them until we pointed out that she had other presents to open. She had a lot to do! It's not that anyone went overboard, but several people sent 2 or 3 things for her to have on Christmas, so she ended up having many presents to open.







She opened several presents, but then wanted to take a break, so we went out to play in the snow. It was very cool that Jacob's first Christmas was a white one. This was the first white Christmas in Dallas since 1926. Samantha was NOT ready to come back in, but Jacob was hungry and crying and Daddy was cold (he wasn't even wearing a jacket to go out in the snow! Crazy man!) so it was time to come inside. She did decide to open the rest of her presents after that, though.







And here are both of my cute little Christmas presents...one two weeks after Christmas 2 years ago and one 2 weeks before Christmas this year.








Once we knew that we would be alone on Christmas, we invited Glenn and Susan (aka Nana and Papa) to come to our house for Christmas dinner. Susan responded by saying that we should come to her house, because she did not think that I would be up to cooking dinner and entertaining with such a new little baby. So at lunchtime, we packed up and headed to their house. There was a lovely group of people there this year...Glenn and Susan, Ann, Aidin and Emma and Jim and Kay Bush and Kay's brother. Susan not only didn't let us cook, but she also had a gift for each child and they all loved their gift. Samantha's was a tea set, with a tea pot that sings a song and says please and thank you. She loves it and between that and the tea set she received from Memaw, Brent and I are constantly being asked to have tea with her.

We had a wonderful time eating and talking with everyone and didn't go home until after 7 that evening. We are so blessed to have friends to be with when we are separated from our family. We had a wonderful Christmas as a new family of four and hope that your Christmas was just as special as ours was.