To kick off Christmas Vacation

Our Christmas vacation officially started today!! I am uberly excited to spend the next 10 days with my family! Martha, Alan & Griffin stopped in Birmingham on their way to Tuscaloosa today. I picked Cooper up from school after her nap and we met Bebe, Martha, Alan, Griffin, Linda, Anna Grace and Millie at the McWayne Center. This was Cooper's first time to go and she had tons of fun! She ran around with Anna Grace and Millie and thought she was such a big girl!

One of her favorite things was the indoor play place. She went down the slide over and over again all by herself!

There was a winter wonderland exhibit where we were able to play in "snow".

And make Christmas cookies.

And drive Santa's sleigh!

We also dug for dinosaur bones.

Played in the water.

Pretended to be a reporter.

And stood in a wind tunnel!

We had so much fun at the McWayne Center and it was a great way to start our Chrsitmas vacation!

My birthday...the last year of my twenties

My 29th birthday was Saturday and I had a great birthday weekend! It started on Friday night with dinner at Iguana Grill. Mindy, Joel, Hudson, Kristen, Cameron & Caroline met us for dinner. Cameron brought Hudson and Cooper a Christmas gift!

The kids were really good at dinner. They kinda just looked at each other at first, but then they ended up sharing stickers & colors & chips! Dinner was so yummy and so were the DreamCakes cupcakes that Caroline brought!

Saturday morning we woke up and went to La Reunion for coffee & pancakes. Afterwards, I went to the spa for a facial... my birthday gift from Wes. It was nice to be pampered and to have some me time! We spent the rest of the day hanging around the house. Which is what I love to do! Be lazy at home and spend time with my hubby and baby girl! We finally got dressed for the day about 5:00 pm and went to Margarita Grill for dinner. I guess I forgot to mention...I love Mexican!

Sunday afternoon we went down to Tuscaloosa for a family birthday dinner at my parents. Jack, Diane, Brian, Grandma, Mom & Dad were there. Cooper loved all the attention! She helped me blow out candles and open gifts!

Christmas with Tucker & Addy

Courtney, Lauren, Tucker and Addy came to our house for our Christmas/birthday swap this year! I was so glad to have them over. It was a Friday afternoon and of course, I was busier at work that morning than I had been all week, so I was running a little behind. Courtney offered to pick up lunch, which was so great. She got Zoe's chicken salad, pimento cheese and potato salad. We made sandwiches for ourselves and the kids ate stuff we already had around the house. After lunch, we opened presents!





Tucker in his superhero cape

  

Then Cooper had to put it on





Then Addy



The kids had so much fun opening their gifts...and the moms did too! Tucker is really sweet to Cooper & Addy and is so gentle and loving when he is around them. Addy and Cooper spent most of the afternoon running around the house chasing each other! They all had fun running and squealing. This is pretty cheesy, but life has really come full circle when I spend the afternoon with my best friends and our kids. In about a month, there will be one more kiddo! 

We attempted a group picture and here is what we got...



A pretty good picture of Cooper & Tucker...minus the shadow problem again. We tried to get all 3 kids to stand together by the tree, but that wasn't happening...so Lauren had a great idea to put Addy in a chair to keep her contained!

And we got a good picture!! We were so busy worrying about getting a group picture of the kids, we didn't get a group picture of the moms. Oh well, what I really want is a picture of the moms and kids together...that is my goal over the holidays.  I am looking forward to seeing the Tidmores and the LeCroys again at Christmas!

Putting up the tree & Helena's Christmas parade

We still put up a live tree at our house, which I love! I really wanted to take Cooper to a tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree (because that is what my family always did), but there weren't any tree farms near by. One more reason to love Tuscaloosa...there was a tree farm about 15 minutes from our house growing up. So, we settled for The Home Depot. It was freezing, but Wes did a fantastic job of picking out our tree...it was the first one he picked up! Here is the bare tree before any decorations. Plus a shadow on the right hand corner of the picture...this has happened to me a lot lately and I can't figure out why??

And here is the tree after...

And, check out the cute pjs that Addy gave Cooper for Christmas! We got a lime green monogram on the shirt and are planning on wearing them Christmas morning! Somewhat surprisingly, Cooper has done great with the tree and presents this year. From time to time, she will walk over to the tree and point out the ornaments. She wants you to tell her what they are. She also points at the gifts and says, "Cooper presents". We point to all the gifts and tell her who they are going to.

We also went to the Helena Christmas parade this year. Wes and I were joking before the parade that it would probably be all of 2 cars, but it ended up being HUGE!! We drove to the top of the neighborhood and walked down the trail, passed the elementary school and down to the street to see the parade.

There were bands and dance teams and twirlers and Christmas music and everyone was throwing candy! We stayed for about an hour, but it was way past Cooper's nap time, so we ended up leaving before the parade was even over!

 

We found the May's, our across the street neighbors, a few minutes before we decided to leave. They were doing the same thing we were...going home to take a nap! Cooper LOVES Kate and was so excited to see her. They held hands all the way home!

Breakfast with Santa



HA!



This is the third year we've done breakfast with Santa at our church, Riverchase Methodist. The men in the church cook a hot breakfast and the price of admission is a new toy for Toys for Tots. There is a great Santa set up and usually some type of craft for the kids. This year we made Reindeer Food to set out Christmas Eve. Cooper was so excited to see Santa...she ate a few bites and was ready to go stand in line to sit on Santa's lap. Bebe stood in line with Cooper while Wes & I finished our breakfast.  She watched as the other kids sat on Santa's lap and it seemed like this was going to be no big deal! Lots of other kids her age are terrified of Santa. Well, when we actually got up close, she wasn't so sure. I had to sit with her while Wes took the pictures. Cooper never cried, but there was no way she was going to smile! She just kept looking at Santa like she really wasn't sure about him. So, not the perfect picture this year, but oh well!

 Bebe and Cooper in front of the Christmas tree. Cooper got a candy cane from Santa and she was happy!

 The first year, Cooper was only a month old! It is so funny to look back at pictures from her first Christmas...she didn't have any hair and looked like an old man! Still the cutest baby I've ever seen though!

Tacky Christmas compliments of our moms...

The SRHW Christmas party was the first weekend in December this year at Ted's Garage. And, the theme was TaCkY ChRiStMaS!! I was pretty pumped because it was going to be a change from the more formal, cocktail type parties of the last few years. I started thinking about what to wear over Thanksgiving and happened to mention to my mother in law that I was in need of some tacky Christmas clothes. She disappeared for a few minutes and then came back with a ton of options. Luckily, she kept most of her Christmas attire from the early 90s! I didn't want to pressure Wes to dress up, so I left it up to him to decide what to wear. On Thursday night, he still hadn't decided. My brother was going to a tacky Christmas party that night and he wore one of Mom's old sweatshirts, so Wes decided he would wear the Santa sweatshirt too. Mom had lots of extremely tacky/90s elementary school teacher jewelry for me that went great with the poinsettia sweater. I wore silver/gold angel earrings, a moon shaped Santa necklace, a snowman watch and 3 beautifully tacky broaches.  Ta da...here is a picture of the tacky couple.



Plus one extremely cute kid!

We definitely weren't going for the big prize of the tackiest couple, but I believe we fit the theme! It was fun to see all the preppy, uptight accountants let loose and have fun! The food was catered from The Fish Market and it was delicious! Here are a few pictures from the party.

Ashleigh, Mindy & Me

Jennifer, Korey, Ryan, Me, Mandy & Wes

Winners of the tackiest couple...Jill & Paul!

Overall, tacky Christmas was so much fun! Good idea Kristen!! Wonder what we'll do next year??