Monday, January 4, 2010

Christmas Break

#2 Reason to be a teacher: Christmas break. The #1 reason is summer vacation (of course I'm not including all the warm & fuzzy reasons that make teaching great).

Anyway, Christmas vacay was good to us! 2 full weeks off for me and 1 full week off for Casey. It was great time of relaxing, baking, dinner parties, Christmas get togethers, and other fun stuff!

Included in our fun was a dinner party with my high school friends from GCA, a trip with Casey's family to see the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan, baking sugar cookies on Christmas Eve, SNOW!, a wonderful Christmas Eve service at c|Life, and of course opening presents and spending time with family on Christmas day! Also included in our break was our 2 year anniversary trip (as well as some other fun stuff), but I'll save all that for another time since this post is already going to be picture overload. :)

ICE with Casey's whole family - Casey, me, Mitch, Beverly, Stephanie, Chris, & Caleb - a great time!


Casey and I in front of the exhibit "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" Me going down the slide - I was kind of a scaredy-cat, but I did it :)

 
Merry Christmas from Casey! He looks pretty good in a parka, huh? :) Caleb is a cutie - here he is playing on the train after it was all over!

 
On Christmas Eve Casey and I started our tradition of baking our own sugar cookies from scratch and then having some fun decorating them. :) 



  
On Christmas Eve, our church had 3 services, so Casey went in to work around 2 and was able to come home around 8:30. Because of this, my mom came over to get me around 5:30 to go to the last service and meet Casey. When we left we felt like we were driving in our very own Texas blizzard! Haha! It was pretty though - and my mom snapped a picture of me before we left!


Christmas morning Casey and I woke up, opened our stockings, and exchanged our gifts to each other! This was our 2nd Christmas in our house and I love having our own thing on Christmas morning!

 
Our big tree (we had 4:)


Casey's stack of presents from me :) Casey got me a great surprise!A super cute Aggie dress with zebra trim! I love it :)


Taking a picture of the snow before we left for Casey's parent's house! So pretty! :)


Opening presents with the Coats and Carrolls!


My Dr Pepper shirt from Stephanie - she knows me well :)


Then off to my Momma Sheila & Pappa Donnie's we went! And Lucy came, too! :)
Here's the tree with a LOT of presents! Oh my!


Opening presents!




My mom hooked us up with some great Apple gifts! :)


Let's just say that this was a lot of fun for all of us :) Haha!


Hope you all had a fantastic holiday season! Ours was great - I love Christmastime - the family, the food, the presents, but most of all I love celebrating the birth of our Savior! What an awesome holiday!!

Happy 2010 guys! Let me know if any of you have made any goals/resolutions. I plan to share mine in an upcoming post. :)

5 comments:

Janna said...

Traditions are so much fun....they just get better with the years!
LOVE the pet ornament...so cute!

Stephanie said...

LOVE the pictures! Good job! :) I think we will start making cookies from scratch next year. We took the easy way out this year and did some slice and bake for Santa. Lame! :) We had a great Christmas with you guys!

Beverly said...

Ok, ok, so you have guilted us all into commenting every time. Be happy that we do read it!
LOVE the blog and especially the pictures! You are very talented!!! Great job, Lauren!
Stephanie, slice and bake is NOT lame!! Santa won't know the difference. In fact, the slice and bake is probably even better than my from scratch would be!! ha

jordanandrachel said...

i really like how you took pictures of you in the 'snow' i wish i had done that!! i didnt get any and now i'm sad.i guess the 2 days it did snow we were so busy rushing around I didn't even think of it.
and jordan wanted me to tell you that you can't write apple family until you get rid of your pc's...don't shoot the messenger=) lol
PS-where did she get that pet ornament, i love it!?

Anonymous said...

Speaking of cookies, I am still waiting on my sugar cookie!!!!! Oh yeah, Ice was cool.