December 2010

December started with another birthday!!  I love birthdays!  So many birthday wishes and a fun party.  My mother-in-law made me a buttermilk pound cake.  Yum!  I thoroughly enjoyed every bite!

 I love decorating our house.  Even though we were going to be heading to North Carolina for Christmas I still put up all of my decorations.  Here is the tree in our living room.

This is the little tree that I put up in our bedroom.  I bought this tree at Kmart for $15 when we first got married.  I put it up in our apartment every year until we moved into our house.  I just couldn't bare to part with it; it brings back precious memories of many happy Christmases. 

Although I'm not as extravagant in my classroom, I do like to put up lights and even had a little "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree.  The students said they enjoyed the festive atmosphere in my classroom.  December was busy at school, but we worked hard and finished second semester.

We had some bad weather during the month of December.  One night freezing rain came through.  Tony brought two of his boys over for tutoring and we didn't realize our porch had iced over.  As they were leaving, Tony hit the top step and went flying.  He broke his arm in three places.  Needless to say this was one night that wasn't festive.



I love these next two pictures because they are of both sets of our parents opening gifts.  We often say that our parents are our best friends.  We are so blessed to have all of them.  They mean so much to us and we loved spending time with both sets over Christmas break. 
We love giving them gifts and, as you can see, they enjoyed opening them!:) 
We were also so thankful for many gifts from them. Our parents always work to make
Christmas a special family time.

 

We had a wonderful trip to Rocky Mount arriving around the same time as Kirk, Chad and Jen.  We immediately caught up on all the news and enjoyed all the festivities planned by Mom and Pop Carlson.  We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, opened gifts on Christmas morning, delicious Christmas dinner and activity time at Positive Action.  Probably one of the funniest events of the day was a rousing game of Family Feud.  Mom was the game hostess and the teams were the guys vs. the girls & Pop.  The girls and Pop won!!  Lots of laughs!!

I remember checking Facebook on Christmas Day to see all of the snow in Chattanooga.  We were a little sad that we didn't have snow on Christmas Day.  Well, the next morning which was Sunday we awoke to a winter wonderland.  It was a unique day because church was cancelled.  And Brian and I spent the day by ourselves while my parents took an all day journey to try to get the Madison kids back home.  They finally returned in time for supper after getting the gang to Charlotte with seats on an airplane the next morning. 

We were sad to leave, but enjoyed a few days in Blowing Rock

before heading back to Chattanooga. 

What wonderful memories of a glorious holiday season!  We loved every minute of it!

Well, so far so good.  Now on to the new year ... 2011!!  It has already been a fabulous year.

Stay tuned for

January 2011