Christmas celebration

We kept things pretty low key this year.  I may say that every year but I really mean it this time.  We have a tradition of going out for an Italian dinner on Christmas eve (if we're not celebrating with extended family) and we picked Gina's which is right around the corner from our house.  It's my favorite restaurant in the area.  Another tradition we have is to pick a family vacation we will be taking in the upcoming year.  We all put our ideas in a hat and then the winner is picked.  We put a little tighter budget out there this year and decided it had to be within driving distance.  The winner was... Kennedy's choice - Oregon!  That will work great with our existing plans to go to Washington.  

Christmas morning we basically had to wake the kids up around 9 because we had the Thompson's and the Frey's coming over for Christmas brunch at 11 and we needed to get our act together.  We are all sleepers in this household.

The Stetson hat Eric is "holding" on his head was his dad's and his mom sent it as a gift. A prized possession for sure.

The kids before the unwrapping anxious to get this party started.

We picked names for each member of the family.  Leighton had me and he made this amazing wood box with my initial engraved on it.  He took a construction management class this year and really planned ahead.  Inside the box was a lovely smelling bottle of perfume.  This box is something I will cherish.

I had Kennedy's name and took the easy route and bought her clothes from J Crew.  Inspired by Leighton's gift, I think next year a homemade theme would be awesome.

Eric scored Leighton an acoustic guitar.  He left the price tag on it... from Alvin Pawn:)  Eric claims the guitar's previous owner was named Billy Bob and was a famous guitarist.  Leighton was thrilled.

Boston got Jackson a car racing game for his x box.  You can't go wrong with an x box game when it comes to Jackson.  The hat Jackson is wearing was also Grandpa Tom's.  The boys wear it with pride and adoration.

Kennedy had Boston and got him new baseball cleats.  Boston's last cleats were worn down so that they couldn't be considered cleats any more.  They were more like slippers.  He gets every penny out of his cleats.

Jackson has been scoping out smokers for a while now.  He couldn't wait for his dad to see this Christmas morning.  Eric loved it!  I see lots of smoked meat in our near future.

Mr. Boss has been asking for a tux for a couple years now.  Santa came through and made his dreams come true (at least one of them).  He couldn't wait to try that thing on.  He also received the penny loafers he's modeling.  We found a thrift shop called Value Village and came away with really nice church shoes for all the boys.  I went in with a chip on my shoulder and came out with 7 pairs of nice, leather shoes for $75. Eric shined them up like new.

Boston quickly changed out of his tux to dawn his new cowboy boots and shirt.  The boots were a find at Value Village too.  Boston and I wear the same size shoe so I tried them to make sure they would work.  The boots are a little big but Boston will be filling them out in no time.  The twins also received boots (from a retail store) but I failed to get a picture of them.

I forget to get picks from Christmas brunch but it was yummy and and with good company.  That afternoon we went to the movies with plans to see Unbroken and Night at the Museum but after Unbroken, our cups were full.  A great, humbling movie.

The next day we decided to head to Galveston Island (about 45 minutes from our house).  We heard it was fun to ride the ferry and see the dolphins.  Before the ferry, we had to eat lunch at The Spot.  I will definitely come back here.  Good food and fun atmosphere.  The ferry turned out to be more than we bargained for.  We had to wait an hour and half to board it, then the ride was about 15 minutes (we did see 2 dolphins next to the pier), then we drove for 45 minutes looking for "something" to do and found nothing!  We figured out that Galveston Island was the location of the place we ate lunch and we had taken a ferry to Port Bolivar.  Port Polivar existed of nothing as it was wiped out by the last hurricane.  After checking out the beach (most people were there to fish) and visiting the local supermarket/convenience store, we headed back to the ferry where we waited for 2 hours to board.  We were in Eric's truck and very irritated with the close quarters. So if you're doing the math, we spent the better part of the day in Eric's truck.  Live and learn.  After laughing about the experience was a friend that has been here most of his life, he informed us that Port Bolivar is a peninsula and we could've just drove off the island had we kept going the other way.

No one else would get out of the truck to take a picture.

This was a little photo op at the convenience store in Port Bolivar.  The kids are always ready to pose...in their own special way.