Christmas with Family, Two Gingerbread Houses, and Lots of Love

We have had a busy and fun Christmas Holiday. When school got out on the Friday before Christmas, we left for Austin to see Cleveland's parents and his sister Crystal and her family. We ate well and played hard. Cleveland and Larry went golfing. Emma and her aunt made a gingerbread house. (Crystal's first one) Emma had a grand time and we traveled back home on Monday to prepare to spend Christmas with my family. On Tuesday, we traveling to Petrolia to see Grandma Mayo. She was in great spirits, even though she was already in bed at 5:30. She has gained 12 pounds and is doing well. She laughed, made jokes with Todd about his beard and knew all of us. It was great to see her so happy. We made the trip then to Oklahoma to Bill's Catfish. I love Bills. We ate cole slaw, hushpuppies and catfish and we were all stuffed. Then we drove back to Jill and Todd's house for opening of presents. Emma loved her walkie-talkies, so did Uncle Todd. We ate cherry cheese cakes made by Jill. They were great. We played with the Anderson's Wii and had fun. Wednesday was to be a slow day. Mom came to our house about 1 pm to make cookies. We ate a late lunch. We made two kinds of dough for cookies and began to work on the second gingerbread house. The house went together fairly easy and we started making the cookies. After several dozen cookies, we turned our attention back to the gingerbread house for decoration. We finally finished and ate a late supper. Emma barely hit the sheets before Santa came to Texas. Then I had to wrap Em's presents from Mommy and Daddy. I finally made it to bed around midnight. We woke around 9 am for Santa's gifts under the tree. Emma was excited to find a Wii, Connectagons, a pink guitar, and some other stuff that I can not remember. Emma and Daddy played and watched tv as I cooked a turkey breast, ham, potatoes, carrots, green beans and rolls. Emma did not like my rolls, they were not like Nanny's rolls. Sorry, Mommy is tired at this point. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, we went to the ranch for Christmas with my Daddy and family. We ate lots of food: brisket, rolls, hot sauce (made by me), chips, cookies of course, pie, fudge, etc. Jill's sugar cookies made the top of the list and were loved by all. I tried again to make the cookies like she does. Not successful, my cookies are not bad, but they are not like Jill's. The kids played and opened their gifts. We played the gift exchange game. No one was ugly this year. We were disappointed. The kids played as we talked. We ended the night by playing dominoes. Todd quietly kicked our tails. We had a great time of love and fun. Hope your Christmas was a happy one. Check out our photos in the slideshow below.