All about our Christmas break!

I'm in the process of uploading pictures, but this post will be a wordy post about what we've been up to in the past two weeks.

Last Monday we flew to Florida. We had planned on driving the trip but a friend of my Dad gave him two buddy passes through Southwest to fly. We were apprehensive about flying stand-by during the holiday season, but it could not have gone smoother. We drove to Austin where we picked up my brother-in-law JD. JD drove us to the airport and dropped us off then took my car back to his place. This saved us a small bundle not paying for parking. Southwest doesn't charge for luggage, so we packed a bunch of Christmas gifts and took them along. We changed planes once on the way to Orlando, and had a direct flight on the way home. My Dad's friend talked us through the flights over the phone so we chose flights that had many open seats. There were no problems, it couldn't have gone any better!

The first two days we were in Florida I made it my mission to clean the house and set up for Christmas dinner. It's no secret I'm not a cook, but by gosh I can set a pretty table. I went through my Moms Christmas stuff and decorated the tree as well as bossed my Dad and Ben around until the three of us got the house in pretty good shape. I set the tables for our Christmas Eve dinner party and on the evening of the 23rd my mom and sister arrived!

It would suffice to say my family COULD NOT keep their hands off Betsy. She was the star of the show. My Dad says she's the sweetest baby in the whole world. Mom kept marveling at how good of an eater she is and Lauren gave her baths and fed her several times. Nana played patty cake with Betsy over and over and she would giggle non-stop. She was the only child at Christmas Eve dinner so everyone got some time to play with Bets.

On Christmas Eve all of us pitched in the get the house and dinner ready for my Dad's side of the family to come over for Christmas dinner! Mom made prime rib again this year, a 15 pound prime rib in fact. We had cheesy mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, peas, bread, banana pudding, chocolate pudding and red velvet cupcakes. Yum. We had an excellent time at the party. Everyone visited, ate, drank and opened presents.

Christmas day was very low key, and I was SO glad. We took our time opening presents and Betsy was funny, not so much interested in the gifts as she was interested in climbing the piles of boxes! My favorite surprise this year was a Kitchen Aid mixer my dad bought my mom in a pretty red color. She was SO excited, and of course we used it the rest of the trip. I also sewed a cover for her mixer, and I think I'm going to start selling those! Only my Mom (and me) could get as excited about a homemade mixer cover as the mixer itself.

The day after Christmas my mom's sister Nancy and brother Charlie and their families came over for a late lunch. It was a great time. Mom made yet another prime rib (Dad bought an extra one). Lauren's boyfriend Sean came to town. The next morning everyone came back for breakfast as well as my Aunt Mary and Uncle Glen and cousin Greg and his wife Rachael and daughter Macy. It's pretty amazing how I saw almost everyone I was related to this year!

Mom and Sean drove back to Atlanta the day after Christmas and Dad, Lauren, Ben, Bets and I hung out. On the 27th Lauren watched Betsy for a couple hours so Ben and I could see a movie (the Blind Side, great movie!).

We flew home the 28th because the flight loads were lighter than the rest of the week. JD picked us up at the airport (he was SO sweet, poor guy had to circle the airport for an hour because our flight and luggage took a while longer than expected) and we went to his house for pizza and to watch the Independence bowl.

We made it home late Monday night and all three of us went to bed immediately.

Yesterday was mission Organization day. First we went to my in-laws house to get Madison, our sweet but smelly schnauzer. We opened presents, brought breakfast and visited for a while. Then we went home so Betsy could nap and we started unpacking and cleaning. We're about 1/3 through getting the house back together. It's more packing all our holiday decorations and the party stuff that's out all over the place. I took the Christmas decor down (minus the tree, Ben needs to break that apart) and I'm hoping to work on it all this afternoon and tomorrow.

So that's it! It was a wonderful Christmas for our little family, and we're glad to be home but miss everyone already.