Christmas Nativity and a Texas Christmas

Before we left for Christmas, Meagan volunteered to rake the leaves. What a sweet girl. It's not too hard to get her to help out when we're working.

See those chairs? They use them to climb the tree. Pretty ingenious. I just hope they don't fall out of the tree and hit those bricks.

We went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, and again for Christmas. But, this time we spent most of the time in Houston with my family. It's a 15 hr drive to Houston so we usually stop over at the Paul Hotel in San Antonio. ;) We were only there for a few days, but we got to put on a Nativity. Justin's mom has accrued quite the collection of costumes. They're gathered from the Philippines, India and Cambodia, thanks to Dad's, Josh's and Justin's missions there, respectively.

In order to make it a little more interesting I've put the pics and videos on a little presentation slide show...thingy...

Unfortunately the videos were too big so I had to break it up.

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I'm really glad we got to do that. I think it helps the kids recognize the real meaning of Christmas.

Christmas morning was fun too.

Opening stockings

Here's the I Spy bags I was making. They love to play with them during church. (yes!)

Successful project. Thank heaven.

I had a lot of leftover charms that I filled the I Spy bags with so I decided to get them a charm bracelet to put them on. Meagan loves jewelery, as you can see.

Candace...not so much.

Sethy boy was sweet enough to show me his train. He's really not old enough to appreciate it yet. All in due time, my boy.

Hooray for warm fuzzies!

Good thing I got them some warm stuff. It got cold while we were there and I didn't pack much warm stuff.

Happy girls. The Nintendo DS was invented for long car trips. Thank you modern technology.

I made a weighted blanket for my dad too. Hopefully he'll sleep better at night. He loves lavender...go figure.

Here's little Breannah's weighted blanket.

And here's where the other I Spy bags went.

Probably my favorite moment of the day. Candace went to find a "quiet spot" to enjoy her new story book reader...in the laundry room. What can I say, we've got a lot of family and they're not exactly quiet enough for a little light reading.