Christmas Eve in North Vernon

On Christmas Eve we headed down south and spent the whole day in North Vernon. We just hung out and ate at Mom and Dad's all the morning, and then later had a gift explosion wih the cousins. A very nice celebration!

Can you tell Mom was playing with a new flash on her camera? Don't worry no permanent vision damage was done.

Mom gave Tessa my little nativity from when I was a girl.

We took one of our candy tree forests but it didn't make it too long before the kids ate it.

Mom and Dad's kitchen, gathered around the snack table

This is my happy face, below is my brother's happy face. Yeah he doesn't like having his picture taken.

This is what the Dads do...hang out on the the couch and shoot the crap until they are called upon to provide their knives for package opening. It's a tough job.

Charley got a tugboat for the bath

Tessa got a new hat and dressup clothes (and lots of other stuff)

And I got a counter top composter!
We have a big composter on the other side of our fence but I'm not always able to leave the kids and go throw stuff out there. This thing will keep compost for several days and has a filter so there's no stink...then you can dispose at your leisure. How cool is that??

Cousins on the couch. It never fails that there is always one who refuses to participate. This time it was David.

Mamaw Betty with Tessa Betty

I think this may have been Tessa's favorite present of the year. She has a couple of babies but this one (whom she named Sally) came with a diaper bag full of STUFF...bottle, paci, clothes, toys. She's been carrying her around for two days and woke up at 3 am last night because 'Sally is cold and needs more blankets!'

At the end of the night Charley got hot and started stripping. I'm not sure how he went from a diaper to completely nude. I think I'll blame Jeremy for that one. Yes there are about 20 people in the room...we have no shame. Remember my happy face from before? I think this is my tired face.

At the end of the night we had a little trouble getting up Mamaw's hill because it had been snowing on top of some ice. After several attempts at the hill we finally backed the car all the way down the road (almost to the valley) and got a running start. Our little hybrid Escape got to momentarily pretend it was a race car and by the time we hit the cattle crossing we were airborn...but we made it!

We got home by about 10, with two very sleepy kids in the backseat, and took our long winter's nap ready for Christmas morning.