Life in the Fast Lane: Merry Christmas!

The short version: we celebrated Jesus's birth by seeing lots of sweet family, eating LOTS of great food, and exchanging gifts. I hope each of you enjoyed your Christmas!

Below are the details.

Saturday, December 22nd we went to Hickory to celebrate Christmas with my mom's family. We ate lunch (barbecue from Lexington BBQ every year!) and then let the kids play.

For the past couple years, Santa has stopped by! It surprised Adelyn and James and they leapt into my brother's lap. James took a while to calm down!

James came around and was sitting in his lap in no time.
That night, we went back to my parents' house, ate a nice dinner, and exchanged presents with my brother. We returned home Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning (Christmas Eve), we went to Seth's parents house for a delicious breakfast followed by gift exchange.

Bobby and Brenda with the grandkids

Trucks! And blocks!

Her eyes have stayed this big for the past few days!

Love my new jacket!

The men putting Adelyn's trampoline together

Here's my family on Christmas Eve. We attended the 4 pm Candlelight Service at Mountain Lake Church. It was nice- less traditional than what I'm used to, but still gave me that cozy Christmas feeling.

After church we got dinner started and let the kids open their one gift. Adelyn opened a Super Why computer game and James got a John Deere Tractor for Kids movie. James NEVER, EVER watches TV (I have tried, but he's not interested). He is obsessed with tractors. We have this one 3 minute 28 second video I found on YouTube that he requests 9,274 times each day. The video he opened was about 40 minutes and he will watch the entire thing. It's not a cartoon- it's like a documentary for kids. This kid cracks me up. He is on the road to becoming a farmer when he grows up.

Don't be fooled by how domestic I look! Seth's sister got me this cute apron. I love it!

Adelyn and James are sprinkling reindeer food on the lawn. We were going to make cookies that day, but we ran out of time. Santa got donuts and egg nog. I hope that was ok with him.

Seth and I enjoyed cornish hen, wild rice, mashed sweet potatoes, and green beans. The kids ate earlier and had the same meal, but with nuggets since the cornish hen took forever.

I thought I'd never get to sleep that night- I was so excited to see their little faces Christmas morning.

Adelyn loves her "American Girl" doll (it's actually a Madame Alexander/Dolly and Me....I just couldn't spend that much on my 3 year old for a doll). She is all about the matching outfits!

James got a train table and we literally have to tear him away from it.

Santa brought them a gator. It was in the garage since it wouldn't fit down the chimney. It was foggy and misting all morning, so they rode it around in the garage for all of 2 minutes and came back inside. NO INTEREST at all. Awesome. Side note, Adelyn fell off of one back in September (not recently, and she wasn't hurt at all). This girl does not forget an injury- she was reluctant to ride it. I thought James would have been over the moon, but he wanted back to his train table.

Seth's parents stopped by to see the kids. I made pancakes and bacon and we sang Happy Birthday Jesus. The rest of the day was spent playing with toys and trying to figure out where to put them.

We celebrated Christmas night with Seth's mom's family. We had a delicious spread of food- you name it, it was there, and then everyone opened gifts.