Christmas Eve

It is 8:30pm. I have just finished preparing meatballs to be cooked in the crockpot tomorrow, a breakfast casserole for Christmas breakfast, and iced a red velvet cake that looks incredible, if I do say so myself!! It has been a full and wonderful day.

Today we had Christmas with the Mayo family. We arrived in Batesville at about 10:30am, which was about an hour and a half later than I had planned on arriving! But we were still there in plenty of time for me to help my mother-in-law get things set up for lunch. We had a great lunch together. It was all lighter types of food, fruit trays, chicken nuggets, chip and dips. We all decided that we did not need everyone to spend the morning cooking. Of course, as soon as lunch was done the kids wanted to know when we would be opening gifts! We settled everyone in the living room for all the passing out. The kids distrubute the gifts and then we open them in order by age, youngest to oldest. So JC was first, since he is the baby! He has still not really been into the unwrapping thing but he did seem to get the hang of it by the end of his stack of gifts!

As you can see he had help! His brother was close at hand to help him along. I don't think it was as much about helping him as the fact that he would be the next to open and the sooner he could get his brother done then he could rip into his own!


This bear was JC's favorite thing he opened! Memaw gave this to him. He immediately starting hugging the bear and laying down on the ground with it like he was ready to go to sleep!


Next it was Drew's turn...

Drew had fun getting some new things, what kid doesn't!

After all the unwrapping was over we had to get the kids by the tree for the traditional photo of the grandkids! My batteries started dying at this point so they are not the best pics...

Jim and I realized when we were looking at these on the computer that they sat in sibling groups! We thought that was interesting. Of course our kids, JC and Drew are together. Jim's sister's daughter, Samantha, is in the middle and on the right are his brother's children, Will and Mary Allison.


Drew was trying to be a good big brother and keep JC straight during the pic taking, but JC was slipping away and Drew decided to try to pick him back up, by the head!! They are quite a pair!

Here they were drumming on the box of Lego that Drew got from Memaw. They both have drummer in the blood!