Christmas 2008

Well, Christmas has come and gone..... thank goodness (at least to my bank account), but all in all Christmas will be missed by me because it is a time in which our family gathers together and just plain ole "enjoy each other's company". I love that...... just sitting around visiting, eating, shopping, runnin here and there.... I love my family! This Christmas was great! First Brookie, Savell, Dwayne, and I visited South Carolina. We did not stay very long, but we had a great time visiting with his mama and sisters. Elizabeth (Brookie's mom) recently had surgery and to quote Brookie who said it so excitedly, "Jennifer, you will not believe it! Mama is 1000% better". Yes, God is good and we are so thankful! We arrived home December 23rd. Christmas Eve we spent time with MamMaw and PapPaw and settled in that night to wait on Santa. Savell and Dwayne made cookies and decorated them. One tradition at our house is that Savell and Dwayne write Santa a letter every year and he leaves them one too when he brings their toys. He usually tells them how proud he is of them and mentions some of their accomplishments over the past year such as honor roll, doing chores, baseball/basketball things, etc. It is always fun to see what they say to Santa and just as fun to read what he writes back to them! Christmas Day, Savell and Dwayne woke us up around 6:30 a.m. (that's not too bad). Last year, Dwayne got up and opened everyone's presents and went back to sleep. I told him I would kill him if he ever did that again! Anyway, we got up, opened presents, got dressed and went to eat breakfast (another yearly tradition) with Uncle Larry and Aunt Linda. This year, we traveled to Inverness to have breakfast at Aunt Linda's daughter, Melody's house. Melody and her husband Carey have a little girl, Hasie Ruth, who will soon be turning 1 on Dec. 28th. Needless to say, she was quite entertaining. I am pretty sure she didn't know what we were celebrating, but was excited to play with all the new toys that had appeared in her den overnight. She is so cute! Later on, we traveled to my Aunt Shirley' s house to eat lunch. I was chosen to say the blessing and while I was praying my grandmother (who is hard of hearing) blurted out, "Thanks Jennifer for my present!" She never knew that we were praying. It so reminded me of Christmas Vacation! Well, today has been a day of rest and just a little bit of cleaning. I have not taken my tree down yet. I still want to look at it a little while longer!