Christmas 2008

We've had a great Christmas season! On Christmas Eve we went to the candlelight communion service at our church. Rachel was funny when we got home. She said she wanted to start a new tradition - open one present on Christmas Eve!!! We told her we weren't sure if it would be a tradition, but since they had been good at church, we let each girl open a present that I picked out from under the tree. I picked our a DVD for each of them and we watched those before we went to bed.


On Christmas morning, Rachel woke up first, but went to the play room to color! So much for running downstairs to see everything!!! I got my cameras rounded up and we all headed downstairs to do our family Christmas. The girls got to see what Santa (aka mommy & daddy) brought. Katelyn got the Leapster that she wanted and Rachel got a 20 inch bike like she asked for. A surprise for both of them was an MP3 player. I got these during the summer for a GREAT deal and thought the girls would enjoy them. One of the best things is that they have a speaker made in them, so you can use headphones or just listen to it with the speakers. I liked that feature so that they don't constantly have headphones on blaring the music into their ears. I stayed up Christmas Eve and loaded some of their music onto the MP3 players, and they really enjoyed that! The girls also got clothes, books, and boots, along with a super cool mini tennis net and foam balls! We got this for them so that they can play in the driveway or maybe even take it up to the gym at church on a cold day.


After opening our gifts, eating breakfast, and getting ready, we headed to Puddin & Papa's house to celebrate with Robert's family. Everyone was able to be there! We had a good time and lots of good food! The girls got some fun gifts. Uncle Steve gave them each a bird house kit that he himself cut out each piece for them and wrote the directions on how to make it! I think that is such a cool gift!!! Brittany made the girls each a scarf too - very cool! Katelyn got books, a Lite Brite, a Leapster game, and a wooden game set. Rachel got books, clothes, an Easy Bake Oven, Twister Hopskotch, and Cosmic Catch. As usual, we ate too much, but thoroughly enjoyed an extra large piece of Puddin's peppermint pie!!!


The day after Christmas we hung around the house for a while and then headed over to Mamaw & Papaw's house to celebrate with them and Lloyd & Wendy. Papaw made us a great supper - breakfast! We had bacon, eggs, biscuits, and syrup. This isn't your regular maple syrup. This is a syrup that my mamaw used to make. It's water & sugar that you mix with butter and then soak your biscuits in it! It's almost like dessert it's so sweet! But it's really good!!!! After supper/breakfast, we exchanged gifts. The girls once again got lots of great stuff. They got a really cool Leap Frog interactive globe that we've all enjoyed playing with! Rachel got lots of books, clothes, art supplies, Sleeping Beauty DVD, Yahtzee, and money. Katelyn got books, clothes, art supplies, money, and a Leapster game. The funniest thing was watching Katelyn open one of her gifts from Lloyd & Wendy. You see, Katelyn loves to make stuff and loves glue, tape, and any kind of art supplies. When Wendy would ask her what she wanted for Christmas, numerous times Katelyn talked about wanting liquid glue. She just thinks liquid glue is the best! So one of Katelyn's presents from Lloyd & Wendy was a box full of tape and all sorts of glue - white liquid glue, clear liquid glue, gel glue, Dora fiesta glue, sparkle glue, glitter glue, glue sticks, etc.!!! The look on Katelyn's face was priceless! She was SO EXCITED!!!


Here are a few family pictures from our Christmas celebrations. I'll post more pictures another day.

This is all of the grandkids in Robert's family: Jessica, Ryan, Kayla, Brittany, Katelyn, and Rachel.


This is all of Robert's immediate family

This is my immediate family

We usually end up doing a silly picture because the girls think it's hilarious!! On our first attempt, the girls leaned back and pulled their legs up over their heads. So for our second attempt, Lloyd & I decided to try to do the same thing! Pretty funny!!!

Santa Isn't Real

Well, we knew it wouldn't be too long before we'd really be having this kind of discussion. At our house, we have done Santa with the girls. We don't make a really big deal out of it or anything - they know that the true meaning of Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus. And the girls long ago realized that the Santas they saw everywhere were all different, which led them to say that those Santas weren't real - they were just helpers. Well last night we had a little incident here that wasn't any big deal, BUT because both girls were lying about it, it became a big deal. Lying was the problem. So we had a huge discussion about lying, telling the truth, honesty, etc. Afterwards I was talking to Robert and told him that I felt a little convicted about the whole Santa thing. Here I was telling the girls not to lie, but essentially, that's what I was doing. The girls have gotten to the point that they would point blank ask "Is Santa real?" We'd always try to turn the question back around to them by saying "What do you think?" That worked for a while, but then they started with the "well what do YOU think?" So since they had already been asking Santa questions anyway, and since we had just had this long discussion about Santa, Robert & I sat them down and told them the truth about Santa. They handled it pretty well. I think Rachel kind of knew that there really wasn't a Santa that went around to every house - but she didn't realize that it was mommy & daddy. Katelyn took it really well - she was just kind of like "okay - cool!" And yes we went ahead and told them about the Tooth Fairy too. I think it was a little overwhelming for Rachel because at one time she cried a bit. She said it was a happy cry, but I think some of the emotions got to her. But, they both seem to be fine with it. I think it helps some that we've never made a huge deal about Santa. We did Santa, but Christmas was so much more than Santa.

Yes - we did tell them NOT to tell any of their friends. That's a discussion that needs to be had between parents and kids! Rachel said if anyone asked her, she's just tell them they need to ask their parents about that!

Afterwards, the girls called their uncle Lloyd and told him that Santa isn't real! He isn't a big Santa fan - he's threatened to tell them before!

So now, we won't have the problem of which presents are from Santa and which ones are from Mommy & Daddy. We told the girls that we'd still leave some presents out unopened just like we always do!

First Official Day of Christmas Break

Well, it looks like we've started out Christmas Break with fevers. Friday night Katelyn was complaining a bit about a headache. Saturday morning when she got up she had a fever, headache, and sore throat. Since one of her good buddies, Virginia, has strep throat, we thought it would be best to run her to the MinuteClinic for a strep test. Katelyn's test was negative, so it looks like she just has a virus of some kind.

By Saturday night, Rachel also was running a slight fever and complaining of a headache. This morning, both girls woke up with low grade fevers, but Katelyn seems to be feeling pretty much her normal self. Rachel is complaining of feeling just yucky all over, pretty much like Katelyn did yesterday. So I'm hoping that by tomorrow, Rachel will be feeling pretty much back to normal too.

We're just hoping that this is just a little 24-48 hour virus and that we'll all be healthy on Christmas!!!

Like Father, Like Daughter

Friday afternoon, the girls were upstairs playing while I was getting supper ready. They seemed to be playing very well together. After supper, we were getting ready to go look at some Christmas lights. I walked into Katelyn's room and happened to look at the wall above her bed. I was very upset to see handprints all over the wall. I could tell it was Rachel's handprints because of the size of the hands. Rachel admitted to doing it. It turns out she decided to smear some lipgloss on her hands, climb up onto Katelyn's bed, and then put her handprints all over the wall. I was so mad! Needless to say, she didn't get to go look at Christmas lights! (AND we had planned on taking them to see the Tale of Despereaux at the movie theater on Saturday, but that was taken away too!) I stayed home with Rachel and did manage to get the handprints off with some Dawn dishwashing soap. She never could give me a reason as to why she did that. I think she learned her lesson though.

Later I found out something about Robert that he was too chicken to tell me about. It turns out that when he was probably a few years older than Rachel, he decided to chase a grand-daddy long legs across the back of their house with a can of gold spray paint! They lived in a white house (not THE white house, just a white house!!!), so you can imagine the result of him spraying gold paint on the side of the house! So evidently, it's a genetic thing to do something bizarre just for the sake of doing it!!

KidStuf Christmas Program

Last night was the KidStuf Christmas Program at our church. The children's choir sang a couple of songs, the KidStuf actors did a skit, Pastor Chris spoke, and Rachel sang in a trio. The entire thing was really good! Robert was one of the actors, Rachel & Katelyn sang, and I just sat there and took pictures! Here's the video of Rachel singing and pictures of Rachel & Katelyn singing with the choir.

Future Wimbledon Champion!!!

Here are a few pictures from Katelyn's tennis clinic on Monday.

Way to keep your eye on the ball Katelyn!!!

Waiting her turn

Look at her turn her shoulders on that backhand! What form!!!!

Sunday Morning

Here are a couple of pictures of the girls Sunday morning before we headed to church.

Pictures with Santa

Today after church we stopped by Wal-Mart to pick up a few things on our grocery list. When we went in, the greeter told the girls that Santa was there! So they went back to see Santa. It turns out Santa was at Wal-Mart, and they were taking pictures with Santa and the pictures were FREE!!! Yes - FREE!!! The lady took several shots of the girls with Santa, and then told me to check at the photo department in 2-3 hours and they'd have the pictures there for me to have for FREE!!! So on the way back to church this evening, I ran in and picked up the pictures. They had all the pictures with Santa stacked on top of the photo counter. I looked through until I found the ones with Rachel & Katelyn. There were 4 different poses with the girls. I asked the lady "Do I just take these?" She said "Yes - they're yours!" And they printed them out as 5x7 pictures! Pretty cool, huh!!! I had to scan them in for you to see, so the color and quality doesn't look as good, but you can see that they turned out pretty cute! I picked out my favorite two pictures to post.

Time for a Change!

Yes - I've been messing with my blog layout again! I wanted something a little more winter-y or Christmas-y. I found this neat background (with my 2 favorite colors - brown & blue!) and then I made my own header. Not sure how long I'll keep this one either, but for now, it'll work! I like the colors!!!

Basketball and Tennis Have Begun!

Well, we had a short break after soccer finished the end of October, but now it's time for the girls to start the next sport season. Rachel had her first basketball practice of the season on Monday night. She had fun and did a great job! She has improved so much since last year. Robert is coaching her team again, and Katelyn is the assistant coach!!!

Katelyn isn't old enough to play basketball at our church, so she started a tennis clinic on Monday! She absolutely loved it!!! It's just for 5 & 6 year olds, and on Monday it was actually just girls - Katelyn plus 3 other girls. Of course, Katelyn is the smallest, but she did awesome! I think the tennis pro was a little surprised at how well she did. Two of the other girls have taken clinics before, but Katelyn and the 4th girl haven't. I think Katelyn hit the ball over the net everytime except twice! She would hit the ball and the pro would say "Excellent" or "Awesome shot!" Katelyn would just grin from ear to ear! I know I'm biased and all, but overall she probably did the best of all 4 girls. She definitely seemed to have the most natural ability and hand/eye coordination. The other girls were all bigger than her, so if they get a hold of the ball, they can smack it pretty hard, but Katelyn did GREAT!!! She's looking forward to her next clinic!!!

Young Achiever

Last week we got a letter in the mail that Rachel had been nominated as a Young Achiever! It is quite an honor to be nominated and we are so proud of her! She had to fill out a biographical sketch and return that. Currently, she is considered a classroom Young Achiever. From the classroom young achievers, they will review the teacher nominations and the biographical sketches and choose grade level winners. There will be a county wide awards ceremony in March that we'll attend. Rachel doesn't fully understand what this is, but I've tried to explain to her that it is an honor. We're proud of you Rachel!!!

And Robert Makes 4

Yes - Robert went to the doctor today and he too has a sinus infection. So that makes all 4 of us with sinus infections and all 4 of us on antibiotics! I guess the good things is that we should all be well by Christmas!!!