Celebrating All Week

Happy Birthday to our Savior! I am so thankful for this season to celebrate the one who came to Earth to walk where we walk and pay the ultimate sacrifice for us. I am blessed to be His daughter. This past week we have enjoyed celebrating with family. Here is a rundown of the last few days... lots of pictures... and lots of fun! Last Tuesday Matt and I loaded the car (it's ridiculous to look at the amount of stuff that 2 people can take) and headed out.

We made a stop in Oxford on the way to visit with Matt's family and do Christmas with them. It was fun to catch up with them and eat some goodies before hitting the road heading towards Gatlinburg.

We stopped on the way to get a Christmas tree. Matt tied this thing to the top of the car in the rain. If you are ever in the market to wait until the last day to get your tree... you can get a good deal --this sucker was on sale for $11.99, can't beat that.

A few days later we celebrated Dad's birthday!! We stayed up the night before blowing up balloons and doing a little decorating. Sister made a fabulous (gluten free just for dad) cake. We opened presents, ate some cake, and celebrated 59 years for the pops!

A few photos and then it was off to Dollywood. Have you ever been? I would describe it as a country amusement park. We love some Dollywood!

We didn't get to do much at Dollywood because the temperatures were absolutely freezing and the roller coasters were closing down. We did do this bungee ropes course contraption thing. It was interesting. We had other family here with us, but I didn't seem to take many pictures because my hands were numb.

The next day was Christmas Eve and we did some last minute shopping and a few more family photos and it was off to have dinner with the whole fam.

We got to meet our newest family member, my cousin and his wife had a little boy in Oct, Caleb. Such a cutie! My aunt Susan had a little surprise for the fam and don't let all that blue blind you, we now have official family t-shirts. I know, you are jealous. I used to make fun of these things when I would see them in the thrift store, but now I am a proud owner of one myself. It's centered around "Christmas Vacation" because this fits our family perfect and we watch the movie together every year. On the back is a top ten list of our favorite Christmas memories (don't think sappy here, people, our family is crazy).

It's Christmas Day and guess what... SNOW!! And lots of it. The night before we knew it was probably going to snow all weekend and get worse as it went on, so we left the 2 non-4 wheel drive cars at the top of the hill and decided we better leave Christmas afternoon to ensure we would get down the mountain. Well, we didn't leave early enough... because the snow came fast and got deep quickly. So, we decided we better stay put and just enjoy it... more to come on that in a minute. So, here we are enjoying it!!

We came in for some delicious breakfast made by sister and mom and decided to open our stockings. Our family really gets into stockings.. not just candy.. good stuff, like stickers with your name on them (thanks sister) and flashlights, eye masks, and who can pass up some good chip clips that double as earrings?!

After stockings we opened presents! Fun times!! As you can see dad really enjoyed his new coat. At this point we are still planning on staying until the next day or possibly the next, until the snow melts some... soon the craziness will start.

After presents we went back into the snow and this time with the sled. I have not been on a sled in a long long time. This puppy was so much fun. We have some great video, but these pictures will have to do for now. We even got mom on that thing. Mom and Dad's house has a great driveway for sledding, so we took advantage of it.

Now, here's where the pictures end... let me give you a quick rundown of what happened next. The rest of the day was planned to meet up with the rest of the fam, have our nice Christmas lunch, do presents with them, lounge around, sip on cocoa, you know, all the fun stuff... didn't happen like that. My aunt called mom as we were walking up the driveway from sledding and said... uh, I think we better get out of here today, it's going to get worse. We literally flew around the house like mad people, packing, cleaning and shuttling our stuff up to our cars to get out as quick as we could. It was nuts! I almost peed in my pants going down that mountain, it was scary scary, but we made it home safe and sound (all the way driving in the snow) and enjoyed every minute of this time with family! We made memories we will never forget. Thank you Lord!