one of the best parts of Christmas...

is giving. well, that's one of my favorites anyway. i think one of my highlights was the look on our parents' faces when we unveiled the beautiful handmade cedar gliders that we bought each of them. they totally weren't expecting it and to tell the truth, it was completely last minute and impromptu. (as is most of my life. ha). but, one of the best gifts this year.

the rest of the christmas pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mcmullen.kelly/Christmas07

they are not edited or captioned. yet. maybe i'll go do some of that now... there wasn't anything overly exciting (the best part is just being with the family, in my opinion), so i won't write about it here. i'll let the pictures tell the story...

christmas with the family has begun...

kelly, cassidy, houston, chris, adrianne,

mamaw, garrison, zac, casey,

chad, ashley, pawpaw

thanks to ashley's persistance and planning... we all spent the weekend in saratoga with chris' grandparents. it came about because we knew that thanksgiving was going to lack a couple cousins and christmas day will also lack a couple cousins. we're all at points in our lives that we have to work around our "other" families and jobs (hospitals don't close on holidays). so, we decided to find a weekend outside of a normal holiday. december 15th and 16th was it. only john and ashley's husband, andy, were unable to be there. but, we had a blast. we all arrived late saturday morning with food, board games, and not much of plan. after lunch, we set up the christmas tree and the other christmas decorations. then, the guys headed outside to play football. the photo is real crappy becuase i was just shooting and not even looking at the previews. had i looked, i would have realized my flash was fighting with the direct sun. however, i wanted to get back inside to the cookies that the girls were baking!

football and cookies.

soon after the cookies were baked, we brought out the games. we played apples to apples for much of the afternoon until dinner. then we broke out taboo. taboo nearly ended our family. there was much debate on the use of words and the scoring of points and when the points counted and when the words were vocalized during/after the buzzer. it actually got rather heated and there is much vicious, unresolved debate on who actually won. in case you're wondering -- it was the girls. fair and square. just don't ask the guys.

playing apples to apples.

before taboo, when we all liked each other. ;) actually, we spent most of the weekend at this table. eating, playing games, arguing, playing games, eating, and just talking.

sunday morning we headed to west end baptist church. we took up 1 1/2 pews! and of course we were introduced as "sam and mildred's grandchildren that came for the weekend... would you all please stand up?" we were the talk of the church that morning. :) chris' grandparents were positively glowing.

it was definitely a great weekend. with tons of pictures to show it. i'm so thankful for this family!