CHRISTmas

Our Christmas celebrations started a few weeks ago at Grandma's house.

We spent some time with her and then exchanged a few presents.

Last week we headed north to Gatlinburg to meet up with all of "the people"...that's what my Papa refers to us as.

On Thursday we celebrated Dad's 59th birthday with some Gluten free cake (made by yours truly) and birthday presents.

After the birthday party, we hit the road for Dollywood. It has been quite some time since I've been there...they've added quite a few more rides and attractions over the past few years. Although we didn't get to ride any of the roller coaster (due to the almost freezing temperatures), we had some good food and a fun time.



Christmas Eve we were finally able to meet our newest member of the family, Caleb. He was born on October 13th (his grandmother, my aunt's birthday). Such a great baby...absolutely precious...can't wait to see him again!

Now you may have noticed the electric blue shirts we are all sporting??

Well my aunt (and Mema) got these for everyone. Our family has a slight obsession with Christmas Vacation. The front of the shirt says, "Nobody's walking out on this Old Fashioned Family Christmas"...if you are familar with the movie, then you should recognize this line. The back has several favorite memories from past Christmases. We had our first Christmas in Gatlinburg in 1985...25 years ago! We've since add quite a few family members and mountain homes to the mix since then. I will see if I can dig up some old photos from our first Smoky Mountain Christmas!

Don't let the blue blind you :)

Glad we had at least one meal together on Christmas Eve, since we did not have a chance to eat together on Christmas Day, because of this....

WHITE CHRISTMAS!

this is what we woke up to on Christmas morning!

Yeah, yeah, everybody wants a White Chrismtas...but a White Christmas in Gatlinburg is a different story when you are on top of a big mountain with curvy roads that leads up to your house.

Click here for sister's blog for a little more commentary and details about the day...

Kristen's wonderful skills with the camera timer...

Time to check out out stockings

Now for presents...

We had a ton of fun riding the sled down the driveway and throwing snowballs at each other. We had planned to build a snowman, but those plans changed once we decided to pack up and attempt to get off the mountain.

Now here's where the fun starts....

ahhh, not really...I was just short of having a meltdown.

This was the view I had from my seat in the car. Do you see how thick the snow is on the windshield??

High, curvy mountain roads, just don't mix well with winter snowy weather...and they don't mix well with me either for that matter.

That's my cousin's car just ahead of us. We had a caravan of six cars coming down the mountain. Thankfully we made it down without any problems...other than when we would have to move to our side of the road when we met a few cars. I don't know why anyone would want to come up the mountatin! If you are at the bottom...stay there!

Let's just say that I am fine with staying away from Gatlinburg until spring

Yea! We made it to the bottom!

We wrapped up the last of our Christmas celebrations with visiting Steven's parents on Monday.

We had a fun day hanging out with each other and then had a wonderul dinner later that day.

Hope everyone had a wonderul Christmas!

Thanksgiving in Sunny Florida

Well I am finally getting around to posting pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to Ft Lauderdale. We had a great time as usual!

Aren't these puppies precious?

Steven's cousin's dog had puppies several weeks ago, and we had so much fun playing with them. I couldn't figure out how to get one home in my suitcase for my Mom...hope my Dad isn't reading this :)

Steven's other cousin (actually his cousin's husband...does that still make him Steven's cousin? aww, who cares) has a hotel on the beach in Ft Lauderdale. We had dinner there on Monday evening and then hung out by the pool while the kids swam. Very nice place if you are ever looking for somwhere to stay in the Ft Lauderdale area.

Tuesday we took the water taxi around the intercoastal waterway...the waterway that has been nicknamed, "The Venice of America". I totally understand why!! The homes were beautiful and quite expensive. One single story home on the waterway for sale, couldn't have been more than about 1400 square feet and it was listed for close to 4 million! Crazy!! The person that started Sunglass Hut has a house there...pretty sweet...as well as the guy that started Waste Managment! Who woulda known a garbage man could have so much money? :)

Sorry these pictures are so white. I had my camera on some crazy setting and could not figure out what was going on. FINALLY figured it out just a few days ago...stupid me!

Wednesday night we had our big Thanksgiving meal. It was wonderful and so nice to sit by the pool while we ate.

We have so much to be thankful for!