Christmas Festivities

We had LOTS of Christmas festivities this year and have so much to be thankful for. Our holiday began with going to church on Christmas Eve with my family. There was a crazy snow storm going on outside, but it was really neat that we got to have a white christmas. After church, we went back to Gigi and Boom's house, had a delicious italian dinner and then opened some presents with them and Meme. Even sweet baby Lila got some presents:)

I love this outfit! She'll probably wear it home from the hospital--it's just that darn cute. I am officially 24 weeks now, so she'll be here soon. We cannot wait to see her sweet little face.

Jared and I got an awesome new Nikon camera, hence the reason for so many pics on this post.

Gigi and Maddie all dressed up after church. I loved her red ruffle dress. I can see Lila inheriting a lot of precious hand-me-downs:)

The next morning we awoke to see that Santa had visited our house during the night. It was so cute...at 6:30am Jackson woke me up by saying, "Mom, Santa came and he ate all his cookies and drank all his milk!"

Santa brought Jackson and Madison lots of neat things...like this firetruck...

and play kitchen....

and many fun things in their stockings. But by far the biggest hits of the day were....

yep, you guessed it, the vacuum cleaner

and janitor cart! No joke--this is exactly what he asked Santa for and he was SO excited that it actually made it down the chimney and into our house.

Madison's favorite thing by far was her baby doll and stroller. She hasn't stopped taking care of baby since Christmas morning!

Jackson did take time to open a few (although not all) of his presents that were under the tree. He tried on these cool new cowboy boots for a bit, but then had to get back to cleaning. As he told me earlier in the week, "Mom, I am one cleaning dude--I will clean allllll day."

After enjoying all of the presents from Santa, we headed over to Gigi and Boom's house again for lunch with my Papaw and Granny.

Maddie got a fun kawasaki.

And Jackson got a nifty farm set. They liked these toys, but were blown away with a present left by Santa.

He left them a note saying that there was a special gift in the backyard.

So we all went outside and lo and behold there was a brand new swing set! Jackson was seriously overjoyed! He just kept hollering "It's a swing set!!" and had a huge grin on his face.

Watching the kids play on the swing set was probably the highlight of our day. Jackson tried out all kinds of things,

while Maddie went down the slide about 20 times.

After a short rest, we headed over to the Hays' for some more celebrating. Of course, the vacuum cleaner had to make the trip, too.

Jackson got a huge kick out of seeing Pa Hays vacuum...

and had a total blast playing with his two favorite uncles.

A big treat for me and Jared is that we got to meet Roxie, Pa's new fiance.

Jackson's favorite part of the night, though, was when the big boys broke out the marshmallow guns and mini-helicopters. I still can't believe that Memaw let them play with those toys inside the house!

J also loved trying out his new scooter from Memaw and Poppy and had so much fun riding it down our sidewalk yesterday.

Maddie got some really cute things too, like this monkey that takes a banana bottle...

and this cute little pink rocking horse.

Thank you all so much for such a memorable Christmas. We are so very lucky to have such great families.