A Very Texas Christmas  - Part 1

I am sure whatever I put below will in no way do our holiday trip justice. It's difficult to sum up a week and a half of wonderful family time into a small blog post, but I will do my best.

It was wonderful. Wonderful to see Jack's side of the family. Wonderful to spend time with my own family. Wonderful to relax. To meet sweet baby Davin. To play volleyball. To not have to cook. To have a white Christmas. To see TWO movies with my husband.....it was very nice all around.

We stayed with Jack's sister and her newly expanded family. They had a 3 week old baby and a house full of people and they could not have been happier about. I was amazed. They generously let us borrow several essential baby gear items (and a car!) that made our stay much easier. In the past we would go between his two sisters' houses, but with Shelby and all that comes with her - we stayed at the one house. It was great.

Meet the handsome baby Davin....the only cousin that is younger than Shelby. He is a bundle of sweetness.

Things started a little rocky with the flu being passed around the house and an out-of-the-blue case of pink eye for Shelby. Fortunately the flu only traveled so far and I caught the pink eye early and had her at a Quick Care pretty rapidly.

On Christmas Eve we had a family dinner at Olive Garden (sans sick G-Ma), which has become a bit of a tradition. Then Christmas morning was spent with the Kuehn/Ezzo family - opening family gifts and finding Santa's surprises. This is a video of Shelby opening her Santa gift. She got into it, but in her heart of hearts, she just wants to eat everything.

Christmas morning - waiting for Uncle Jack to wake up....

During the day we just hang around the house and worked on the dinner that we would all later eat together. It was a beautiful white Christmas so I decided to snap some photo by the window. I actually got a whole bunch of good ones, she was in good spirits. G-ma surprised us with the adorable Christmas outfit upon arrival.

After a delicious Christmas dinner, we all got together to sing Christmas songs - another Schenk family tradition. This year we were without songbooks, so it was a little trickier, but still a wonderful memory and tradition; one I would love to adopt for our family. Below is not the most fantastic photo, but I like it because it shows the whole family/scene. Notice the sweet peanut int he middle.

To be continued....

***I decided to break up this post, for fear I would never have time to get it all up at once!