Christmas 2011

My sister, Em, was very diligent and already blogged about our Gibbs family Christmas! If you want to see more pictures and stories, you can go over and say hi to her. For memory sake, I'll give a quick recap with lots of pictures. You know time with my family isn't complete without taking a million pictures.

Mike & I headed to Charlotte on the 23rd so we could attend the Christmas service at Elevation. The service was amazing and I probably cried through half of it. After the service, we grabbed a quick dinner and headed to Clemmons. Nate got to stay up late and greeted us when we arrived...he was so stinkin cute! We were so happy to see our sweet dog, O'Malley, who showed us lots of love.

The 24th was spent working out, last minute errands, baking cookies with the kids, reading and hanging out with the family. That evening we went to our home church, Clemmons United Methodist, for Christmas eve service and it was quite entertaining. I can now say that I have experienced church with a 4 and 2 year old. I really didn't pay attend to the service (sorry baby Jesus) because I was laughing at the kids or playing with them. Even though Em thought they didn't behave very well, I thought they were angels and other kids were MUCH worse. When we got home, dad had gotten Deedee (grandma Gibbs) from the home. She has Alzheimer's so we never really know who she will know or what will come out of her mouth. She was in a great mood, LOVED watching the kids and was very engaged. She acted like she knew me but had no clue who Mike was...we just had to laugh about it. My mom made a yummy dinner & dessert and we had a good time catching up with Deedee. After dinner, it was time to get Santa's cookies & milk ready before reading the Christmas story.

We woke up bright and early on Christmas morning so we could get breakfast started. In our family, we open stockings, the "kids" make a big breakfast and then open presents. Nate & Abby got SO MANY PRESENTS! It was so fun to watch them open presents and get so excited. We got to talk to Lora on Christmas morning while she was vacationing in Italy. Lora & John went on a 2 week vacation in Italy so it was weird not having her there...she was definitely missed! The rest of the day was spent playing with presents, reading, napping and just hanging out around the house.

I woke up on the 26th to lots of "Happy Birthday's" from my family. For the record, Nate was the first one to wish me a happy birthday! It was the perfect day...went for a walk with Mike & O'Malley, met some of the West Girls for lunch at The Loop, a little shopping, relaxing, dinner with my family at my favorite spot- The Village Tavern, finally we ended the night with a little party, presents & dessert!

Love these 2 polo boys

We always have such a great time when my family gets together and this year wasn't any different. After 5 full days, we packed up and headed to Charlotte for a few days with friends. Christmas 2011 was another great one for the books!