New Year's Eve

     We all stayed up on New Year's Eve to watch the new year roll in.  This is nice when you're in the central time zone, because the ball drops at 11 and you can go to bed.  It's technically 2016 at home, so good enough.  We spent the evening watching horrible Ernest movies.  I love a good Ernest movie, know what I mean?  But I'd never even hear of Ernest Goes to Africa or Ernest Joins the Army.  There's a reason.  A little Ernest goes a long way.  

     Still, we had our own little party, complete with champagne for us and sparkling grape juice for the girls.  Woohoo!  2016 here we come!

Oooooooh!  Gross!

Canton

     We finally made it to check out Canton.  Not to be confused with the Mississippi Canton Fleamarket, This is the once a month Canton TX fleamarket.  It is huge and pretty amazing.  Everything wasn't open, but there were still too many vendors and too much stuff to take all in.  We walked and looked and walked until we were all zone-blazed.  I can only imagine this place in the summer when its hot.  Crazy!
Where did the duck lips come from?

    And the bonus is that the girls got their picture with JarJar Binks.  He's a Jedi hero right?!  Or does he just sell lemonade?  Or is he secretly a Sith Lord?!  Will we ever know?

The Caldwell Zoo

     It was a beautiful day to go to the zoo!  Some of the animals were up for the winter, and the parakeet house wasn't open, but it was still fun.  We loved lovin' on the goats!

     This little monkey took a liking to Celee and Lyla.

     We watched the giraffe for a while eating popcorn.

      Their eyes are so beautiful!

     The girls had fun feeding all the ducks too.  There were several different kinds and they all made different noises.  My favorite was the little fancy one with a bouffant.

     Since it was a little chilly, most of the animals were out in the sun.  So we got close-up views of lots of them, like the serval.

     The penguin house was pretty nice.  And we happened to be in there when the zoo keeper came in to feed them.  She did a talk while she fed them and it was neat to hear her talking about all their different personalities.

     Once we had exhausted the zoo, we were ready for Mexican food!  Mercados is so yummy!  And everyone gets a sopapilla at the end of the meal and ice cream if you want.  So good!

Texas

     Gwyn, Celee, and Lyla finally got to make ginger bread houses.  We searched all over Newton County and Meridian for kits, but no one had one.  We found one in Tyler so they got to make them at Monty's house.  Lyla had fun destroying hers before a picture could be snapped.

     The hoodie footies were a great hit, especially after it was discovered that you could put a pillow inside the front of them and sumo bumb each other.  I won't devulge who let them on to this idea, but they went on like this for some time.  It even turned into the Harlem Shake at one point.

     The girls were excited to visit the Children's Discovery Center in Tyler again.  They had gone there this summer, but it was super crowded this time!  We still enjoyed the earthquake simulation, the replica of the Santa Maria, the rock wall, and the play town.

     Oh, this was to float balls with?  It's more fun to pretend you're in a wind tunnel.

     We had a fun day at the children's center and had a girls' lunch out.  Then Lyla finally got us to play Monopoly with her.  I don't really remember ever in my life playing a fully completed game of Monopoly and it wasn't to be completed today.  She hung in there a long time though and did good with all the rules and money.  We had finally gotten to the point that major money was going to start changing hands and houses were going to be built when she said, "Do we have to keep playing this game?"  No, I guess not.  I declare myself the winner then.

Christmas 2.0

     We drove to Texas to have Christmas with the Montgomery on Saturday.  We all couldn't wait to see Monty and Pop!  I will say that we did visit a little before hitting the presents.  Lyla finally got her Heely's that she's been wondering about each package for.  Celee also got Heely's, so now as long as they don't get kicked out of places they can roll around in public.  We all got hoodie footies, so now we can cuddle up in a warm little ball and hibernate.  If it was cold here that would be amazing.  We'll have to wait on some cold weather though because it's been hot and humid our whole southern stay so far.

     The Montgomery cousins, LexiJo and Brynlin came over to play.  This is a crazy and loud bunch of girls!  Boy, do they have fun though!  They set up some kind of General Services establishment that we were all obligated to come get help for our ailments at.

Christmas Day!

Christmas, Christmas time is here!  Time for joy and time for cheer!

     I am really thankful that my kids don't get up crazy early anymore.  It was a reasonable 7:30 when we heard them up and about.  They went straight for the stockings (which we remembered this year) and probably could have spent quite a long time just with that loot.
     I must say that I am really so proud of my girls and how un-selfish and un-materialistic they have shown themselves to be over the past few months.  It really was hard to get them to make lists with very many things on them, and they have consistently thought of others each time the talk of gifts has come up.  And Gwyn even made a point to ask if we could make sure we read the Christmas story before we started opening gifts.  Amen sister!

     When we did get around to the gifts, we decided to open one at a time, both to fully appreciate the gifts, but also to make it take longer.  It always goes by so fast when the wrapping paper starts flying!

     Everyone got some things that they really liked, both expected and not!  Jason got the game, Dixit which we all sat down to play.  This is a cross between the Game of Things and Apples to Apples, which makes a sure recipe for silliness!

     I always try to have one total surprise gift for the girls.  This year they were all super perplexed by the really heavy box that was labeled for all three of them.  They were so excited when they opened it and found a slack line!  So naturally we all had to get dressed and go try it out!

     Celee also got the game, Exploding Kittens.  We seem to be a board game playing family and our repertoire just keeps getting larger and stranger!

     We were so happy to get to see Barbara and Bill, who came over for lunch with us.  These three sisters aren't together as often as I remember when I was growing up.  And it's even less frequent for us to be there too.  I love my family and I am so happy to get to spend even this small amount of time with them all!

     It was a very happy Christmas Day.  I feel like it was a good mix of celebrating Jesus, family, and gift-giving.  We even sang him Happy Birthday at lunch with candles that we all blew out.  I am so thankful for so many people to love, and so many adventures to have with them.  God has so richly blessed me more than I deserve.  I'm happy that we can get together to celebrate God's love and the people he's given us to love as well.