It's a Camo Christmas

I am finally wrapping up the recap of Christmas celebrations today and for good measure, it's almost 2012! So let's see what Christmas Eve and Christmas day brought for me and the dapper dachshunds. After the party at my grandmothers, we all loaded up for the 2.5 hour drive and headed back to my parent's house for Christmas Eve dinner, which is our tradition. My father cooked a fabulous prime rib, per tradition as well, and we topped it off with some roasted asparagus and baked potatoes. My mother made lots and lots of goodies.

She even got to try a new recipe from Pinterest. She made this, which I'm sure if you are a Pinterest stalker like I am, you have seen this many times.

 These chocolate/toffee covered potato chips were awesome. Highly recommend you try them. After we ate, it was time for presents. I called this post a camo Christmas because I was a complete bum and didn't change into a nice outfit for our Christmas dinner. Who doesn't want to celebrate Christmas in a camouflage t-shirt from the Alabama Wing House? haha!

Barrett's face says it all. Oh, and I threw on the Pioneer hat for good measure, just to solidify how awesome my outfit was! We took this picture because he liked that his boots matched my shirt :-) And speaking of boots, Barrett was extremely happy to get a pair of boots that match his daddy's boots. He calls them his snake boots. Nobody has the heart to tell him they are ostrich.

Brad and I put on our Santa hats to begin passing out the presents. My mother makes us wear these every year......

I know one pup that was extremely pumped that it was FINALLY time to open presents. Only Jack and Oscar got to join in the party. The other two munchkins were tucked safely away in the utility room away from the chaos.

 Little Mr. Oscar loves, loves, loves to open presents! He opened just about anyone's present who would let him.

Don't worry. I let him open one present early. The rest he had to wait until Christmas morning for Santa to bring him his gifts along with his little brothers.

Barrett racked up on the gifts. We all pretty much decided not to exchange with each other, but to just buy for Barrett. It was fun to watch his excitement opening all of his presents. 

If you can see above, Barrett was in the zone opening his presents with a pair of scissors. He has the best Sissy (me) in the world. I bought him a pair of scissors (children's of course) and a little book that is made just to cut out shapes for him. I know he is obsessed with scissors, so he really liked his present. I didn't so much when I had my face turned to him and looked over in enough time to see that he had the scissors reached out to my hair about to cut....I know I need a haircut, but not from a 4 year old. The other present I got him, turned out to be a little labor intensive. Barrett really wanted a trampoline (but a real one for outside) so I compromised and got him one to play with inside. It was a beast to put together. I started the assembly project, but soon found myself whooped by this thing, so David offered his assistance.

Soon it proved to be a little much for him, so Big Mike stepped in to help.

We finally got it once Barrett came to help with his screwdriver. He had to show the big guys how it was done.

It was finally assembled and he could jump to his little heart's content.

So that pretty much wrapped up Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning me and the pups got up to see what Santa had brought all of us.

Please excuse the hot mess that I was. I'm not a morning person at all. haha The puppies got to open their presents and were happy with all the goodies Santa had brought them. You can see Oscar flipping out watching the puppies open "his" presents. He doesn't like to share. (and yes, I am that crazy, dog person who wraps Christmas presents for their dogs!)

Above is Brutus with a tennis ball that he couldn't wait to unwrap. That poor ball was destroyed in about 2 minutes once he got it out of the wrapping paper. He is a beast when it comes to chewing up toys. After we finished up Santa Claus at our house, we headed over to Brad and Nicole's for breakfast and to see what Santa had brought Barrett. Santa brought him a BB gun. Oh my!

Barrett and the big kids (all of the adults) had fun doing a little early morning target practice with his present. And later I got to do a little real target practice of my own. I took down this beast over the weekend, or as Barrett likes to call it, a trash hog.

Ok, so it wasn't that big of a beast, but it will do. I'm not a very big deer hunter because I can't sit still that long and wait. It's too boring. Take me to a bird shoot or to stalk some hogs and I am all over it. So my Christmas in Blountstown was definitely spent redneck style in camo. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I absolutely adore my family and it was a really good Christmas, despite everything that has happened this year. God is good is all I can say. And to round out the weekend, we got a new baby in the "family" (it's my sister-in-law's sister who had the baby).

Meet Rawlins. He entered the world on December 26th at 8 lbs, 2 ozs. Everyone was excited that she finally had him. Barrett now has a new cousin to play with that isn't a girl. haha And speaking of babies, I just want to say that this weekend, we would have been celebrating the 1st birthday of our baby that we lost. So in memory of that child, I just want to say that I love you and that you aren't forgotten. <3

So, that concludes all of my Christmas celebrations. Next up on the list will be New Years and I am excited because I will be celebrating in Savannah, one of my favorite places to visit. So I am looking forward to getting out of Thomasville for a bit. Hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Christmas like I did! It was the perfect way to finish up 2011!

Family Christmas: Part Two

Another day, another Christmas celebration to post about. So let's continue with the festivities. Saturday we went over to my other grandmother's house (my mom's mom) to enjoy Christmas time with that side of the family. First off, I want to just comment about my gorgeous better half (hehehehe). I call her this because we now live together and when I moved in I joked with her that her neighbors probably thought she had a girlfriend and of course I did nothing to nix that rumor around the neighborhood. And I guess we are now an official couple considering that most of our family sent us Christmas cards addressed to both of us on the card. I thought it was pretty funny, but this pretty lady didn't find it quite so humorous.

Anywho, I love my girl Stacey. I think she is the bomb {dot} com. And shortly after I got this beautiful shot, I got this:

Really, Ashley? Get your camera out of my face!

But we quickly made up. She can't stay mad at me for long.

Until I went in for some sugar.

Yeah, she didn't appreciate my attempt at a face rape. Oh well...... You can see her desperation trying to escape my clutches. I love to pick on her, if you can't tell.

Moving along. Barrett had a good time getting lots and lots of attention.

He was all about some Aunt Ronda and Caroline. Caroline tried to teach him a new trick.

The best he could do was just stick his tongue out. Maybe he can work on that skill and be better prepared next time to touch his nose with his tongue.

We took lots and lots of family pictures. Of course, everyone likes to pick on poor Ashley. I spent Friday night at my cousin Heath's house and when I walked out after getting ready to go to this party, he asked if I was going to be on the prowl for a man at my grandmothers. And of course, the hits kept coming. But looking back, I guess my dress is a little short now. Guess I should pay attention when the tag says dry clean only. Whoopsie.

Here is Brad trying to cover up my legs with a bag of chips (the dress is J Crew if anyone is curious as to where it came from). Here is Mama G with all of her granddaughters (minus one) and grandchildren (minus two plus one great grandchild).

And of course, the single family pictures.


 

 

 My grandmother's sister was also there for the day, which I was glad because I haven't seen in in awhile. She recently had a bad fall and has been staying with Mama G while she is resting and healing.

Mae Glyndal and Aunt Jet (Jessie)

And just because I love him and told him he would make a special appearance on my blog, my Uncle Brett. <3

 So that wraps up Christmas in LA (lower Alabama). Next up we will be moving the merriment back to good old Blountstown. So get ready for Christmas at the Redneck Riveria.

Family Christmas #1

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday! It's now Tuesday and it's hi ho, hi ho, back to work I go. If you were like me, this past weekend you ate way too much and enjoyed spending time with your friends and family. I will do a brief recap of the holidays. First up on the festivities was Christmas with my father's side of the family. I left work on Friday and headed to the big town of Bratt, FL where my parents are from. My grandmother was excited to have a big family get together this Christmas. We haven't done one all together at her house in many, many years because we are usually all so scattered, but this year the stars aligned and we were all able to go. It is tradition that she makes seafood gumbo for Christmas dinner, so that's what we had and it was so delicious. I haven't had her gumbo in years and it was just as good as I always remembered. And of course she had her usual arsenal of homemade fudge, turtles, and other candies. I was in sugar heaven.

Whenever this side of the family gets together, it is usually tradition that the guitars are pulled out and we are entertained by the more talented members of the family. (I not being one of them...)

My Uncle Gary, brother Brad, and cousin Nicholas were on the guitar. And my other cousin Gary Wayne was hammering away on the harmonica.

Guess I should have loaded up the keyboard so that I could jam out with them :-) But I enjoyed the show sitting next to one of my most favorite people, my lovely grandmother.

If you didn't notice my brother's sweet boots, you should take another look. They make me sooo jealous.

And you can tell the generation gap between Brad and Nic (who is 21 years young as compared to us old 30 year olds...)

And speaking of other attire at our gathering that I was jealous of:

Brandon came busting up in there with this shirt on. I almost stole this right off his back. I told him to get one for me, since I think its only fair that ex-BHS FFA Presidents should have privileges to such sweet shirts, even 11 years after they have graduated. If he doesn't come through, I'm hoping my girl Becki who is the Guidance Counselor at the high school will. She said she would hit up the FFA sponsor for me. (I'm lame, I know)
I got to meet Nic's new girlfriend who is super sweet. I just can't believe that he was brave enough to bring her around our motley crew.

For some reason no one wanted me to take their picture, so I don't have that many. I got a lot of this type of thing:

As you can see, I got Nic to cooperate with Julia's help. Brandon however, took more persuasion.

Finally got him! Sorry, Brandon! So that was Family Christmas #1. Stay tuned for Family Christmas #2 and #3.