catching up-take 2-Christmas Part 1

I went to Spartanburg the week before Christmas as the girls were out of school and Alan had a busy work week. They loved being at Grandmama and Granddaddy's house and it was nice for me, too, to be able to go "home" for Christmas. My parents came back with me on Christmas Eve and spent about a week at our house. The rest of my family (brother and family and sister and family) came on Sunday and we had a lot of family time and a LOT of presents! Here are just a few pictures of Christmas Day and Sunday morning and I plan to post a few more tomorrow that are from various other people's cameras ...

So, I guess a lot of people would laugh that I would even call this "playing in the snow" as it was really more just flurries and rain ... but it is as close as we may ever get to a "White Christmas" ... we donned rain boots and went splashing in the melted snow puddles and caught a few snowflakes on our tongues then went inside for hot cocoa ...

The view from out the family room window ... it was really pretty and it lasted pretty much all day ... too bad there was zero accumulation as the girls were dying to make a snowman.

Well, these are in backwards order ... but here are a few of the things the girls got from Santa ... they got tons of gifts from Santa, Mommy and Daddy, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles ... they are very fortunate girls.

Santa came!!!

... hmmmm ... what else is in here? She got the hang of the gift thing pretty quickly!

... as usual, she wants everthing that belongs to the twins ... even before she knows what it is (PS I think this is a GREAT photo of my Mom ... beautiful ... and it was first thing in the AM?!?!)

I guess ... who could really blame her for wanting the twins' packages ... she did sort-of get sold short ... I (I mean, Santa) thought she wouldn't know the difference ... but you know ... I think she DID!

Girls being silly girls ...

Looks like Caroline has the same general feeling towards Santa that the twins do (they still refuse to sit in his lap and I don't try to force them to.)

Last, but not least, you know I had to take pictures of my cookies! They came out pretty this year. And tasty if I do say so myself =) I made 150 of them! Took me 3 or 4 nights of staying up way past midnight but it does put me in the holiday spirit!