Christmas 2013 : events

Now that I've shared my spoils, here's more of a peek into the days surrounding Christmas, and beyond:

We each had assignments for Christmas eve so Mark and I brought individually sized cheese balls and some crispy asparagus. The cheese balls proved hard to transport over 50 miles to Arlington, but they made it and were intact upon arrival!

Audrey got a play phone that closely resembled an iPhone for Christmas. Noah promptly pretended to 'take photos' of me with her 'phone'. Kids these days...

Sweet girl! They played a little Leap Frog bingo before dinner.

LOTS of gifts under that tree! Noah and Audrey had to practice patience and waited until after dinner to tear into all of those. It must have been TORTURE!!! ;)

Sweeeet baby.

Somehow, we managed to break the ancient Nintendo out....

...and quickly discovered that the Duck Hunt gun doesn't work with modern technology. The TV wouldn't pick it up!

We switched to Super Mario Brothers, which worked JUST fine! It was so funny reliving those memories!

On Christmas morning Mark and I got up and opened gifts with each other and Motley. She got a new beaver toy, some bones, and a pretty new necklace! Mark has complained all year about her obnoxious sparkly pink collar, so we traded it out for reflective orange and silver with a bone motif and a blue flower. I think it's lovely!

I managed to skip over all of Christmas day and Thursday, but it was a great time spent with Mark's family and then shopping and friend time on Thursday!

I went early Friday to the eye doctor to hear the fate of my eyes...I started having trouble with my contacts back in April and after a misdiagnosis from the Target doctor (I had no insurance at the time), I found out in August that I was allergic to my contacts. UGH! So almost 6 full months later and after wearing glasses 100% of the time, I was given permission to get back into contacts!!! My eyes haven't fully healed, but they might never get better. As long as these new contacts don't bug me, I'm free to get back to glasses-free life. AND I GET TO WEAR SUNGLASSES!!!! (Imagine living on the surface of the sun without sunglasses - that's summer in Texas without sunglasses, it was miserable!)

I planned a surprise dinner for Mark's birthday on Friday night since all of his high school friends are in town for the holidays. As I was cleaning the bathroom, I put something away in the medicine cabinet above the sink in our main bathroom and Mark's cologne came barreling down towards the sink. Despite my best efforts to catch it, it hit the sink at an angle and managed to make a GIANT crack in the sink, which turned into a giant hole when Mark 'gently' touched it. Don't worry, the cologne bottle is fine. hmph.

We headed to dinner later that night and SURPRISE, Mark's friends were already there. We had a great time eating and then came back to our house to catch up more!

Mark's parents passed down their fire pit so we made a sad attempt at a bonfire. It was warm for a few minutes! Overall, I think Mark had a great time visiting with his friends, and we were glad to have them!

Saturday was spent in the Grapevine area at my sister's sister-in-law's wedding. Our family is kind of a huge web and we love it and we had a great time at her wedding catching up with friends and family.

After the wedding we drove back to my parent's house and gave my mom her birthday present (unlucky birthday!).

Sunday we went to my aunt's home in Fort Worth for a Bennett family Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Here is a smattering of cousins and spouses, many of which were missing! It is always a good time with the Bennett family!

I hope you all got to spend time with your families over the holidays as well! Stay safe tonight and Happy New Year!!!