ARE OVER!! Not that I’m happy about that but life can finally calm down now and get back to normal. What did we do for the holidays you ask…well, here is a look at what all we did the last few weeks/months. Over the last month I have taken several family photos. There were the Treadaways, our pastor and his family…

…And then Jalyn, our friends Josh and Shalyn’s baby…

…then there were the Nash’s. Gracelyn, who is 2, didn’t really want any part of taking photos so it made for a difficult day, along with my camera that was acting up…that’s a whole other story…

We went with a group of our friends from church to see Bethlehem Revisited in Waxahachie…

Our holiday festivities with family started on Dec 21 when we held our annual Turner-Medlin Family Christmas/Jake’s Birthday party. We all went to the Medlin’s and had some yummy chili and all the “kids” (we’re too old to be called kids) did a white elephant gift exchange and then Jake opened up his birthday presents. Jake turned 8 this year and I can’t believe he’s getting so old. I remember the day he was born…anyway, we had fun time together and couldn’t wait to do it all over again on New Years Day, when we celebrate my dad and Bob’s birthday…more on that later in the post.

On the 23rd we had all of Jonathan’s family over to our house for dinner and games. We all had a great time and always look forward to seeing everyone. (to see any of these collages bigger, simply click on it and viola)

Christmas Eve we went to our parents church for a candlelight service and then back to my parents house for dinner. After dinner we headed over to my aunts house to spend some time with her and my cousins and their kids. Had a good time seeing all of them and about 10:00pm my cousin’s son, Bryce, announced that “there was good news and bad news…the good news is that santa is in Texas, the bad news is that santa is in Texas and I’m not in bed!” So with that we all headed home.

Christmas morning Jonathan and I opened gifts at our house, well some of them…I made Jonathan go on a scavenger hunt for his gift. He started out at our house and then headed to the park which sent him to our pastors house where they slipped the present in their mailbox for me. I think he enjoyed it but maybe not as much as his present which was two tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert.

After that we went to my padres house for Christmas with my familia and ate a great lunch and opened gifts. And as always, we let the kids go first which only takes about 10 minutes total because they rip through them all at warp speed. After lunch and presents we decided to play a game of family feud…that was a lot of fun, except my dad kept forgetting the rules! My niece got a doll house and my nephew got a new Wii so they were both preoccupied with those the majority of the afternoon and that was a gift to all of us!!! That’s the only way we were able to play family feud.
Later that afternoon we headed over to Jonathan’s parents and hung out there a while. Tim and Kara got rock band for the wii so we played that for a while and then Jonathan’s dad made a great ham for dinner so we ate and opened some gifts. Over all, we had a wonderful Christmas and are blessed by our family and friends that spent it with us!

Then for about a week our lives were back to semi normalcy…I went back to work but Jonathan had the week off. New Years Eve we spent over at Richard and Amber’s house playing games and eating some yummy mexican food. Then for the countdown to bring in the new year we lit some sparklers–that’s always fun!

And finally, Welcome 2009! We have entered into yet another new year. We slept in new years day because lets face it, we were up late partying the night before!! You know us, we’re such the partiers-HA! Then later that afternoon my family and the Medlins came over to our house and we grilled some fajitas and celebrated our dad’s birthdays! Honestly I can’t remember how old they both are–somewhere in the early 60’s! yikes, sorry guys, I love you, but that’s old!

We always have fun getting together but don’t do it as often as I would like. The Medlin’s have always been a second family to us, Bob and Vicki were like our “other parents” and Ty and Tami were like siblings growing up. It’s so much fun now that we are all grown up and adults…We’ve all grown up together and shared special occasions together as we each get married, have kids and watch each of us, or them, become parents for the first time…it’s been fun!! A great way to start a new year. I’ve been told that how you spend your New Year’s Day sets the stage for that year…we’re off to a great start!

Because we had so much fun on New Year’s Day, you get two collages.

Tonight Jonathan and I went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert for his Christmas gift and had a blast. This is my 5 year to go to the concert and I have loved every year. It’s a Christmas tradition that I had and then when Jonathan and I started dating we decided to make it our tradition. We are going on a cruise in February so we decided that we just wouldn’t be able to spring for tickets to TSO this year and the cruise. We were both bummed about not getting to go, Jonathan was pretty bummed so I decided to surprise him with tickets for Christmas. He tried many times to get me to agree to get tickets and it was hard to tell him “No, I just don’t think we can this year” when I had already bought 2 tickets. Anyway, we went to the concert and love it! The camera police are usually out making sure you don’t take any pictures of the concert but I was able to sneak some with my camera phone–gotta love them! So here are some illegal pictures from the TSO concert:


After the concert we met Jen and Jed for dinner at Patrizio’s in Highland Park Village….let me tell you, they have some amazing italian food! I’ve been there before and have always wanted to take Jonathan so I figured why not now! We had a good time with Jen and Jed and then decided to get some Italian Gelato at Paciugo’s to go with our Italian food.

And that concludes our holiday festivities! I hope everyone had a good time with their family and friends over the holidays and here’s to a wonderful new year!