Stix

Friday, my mom, brother, bro's girlfriend, sister, niece, and I all went shopping ALL DAY! We found LOTS of good deals to spend our Christmas money on. We decided that we had worked up an appetite for a good meal, so my sister called and made reservations at Stix. My bro-in-law, other niece, and Tatum joined us for dinner.

Here is a picture of Tatum...she is excited we are out to eat...

Tatum's Uncle Matt taught her a new face. She was SO funny doing it and these pics don't do it justice. I will have to get a video of it...

Mckayla, Laurie, and Mya watching the chef at the habatchie grill...(is that what it is called??)

My mom and Tatum...
our chef...he was so funny...
all of our yummy food. We also ordered sushi and had soup and salad too. We were STUFFED!!
Here is a picture of my bro Matt and his girlfriend Stephanie. Stephanie is graduating from LAW school in the spring...Hopefully she will be a permanent part of the family one day soon??!?!

Finally, this video is being posted especially for my bro-in-law. He doesn't believe I have a video of him catching shrimp in his mouth, so here it is...

Just in case you didn't notice, I posted 4 or 5 other blogs tonight, so be sure to look at all the pictures of our Christmas get togethers and leave comments too!

Christmas Round 4/5-To Gran's House We Go...

Christmas night we headed to my Grandmother's house (Tatum's Gran) for dinner and time with family. Somehow I managed not to take many pictures while we were there. Here are the very few that I did take...

This first one is my brother, Matt, holding Tatum and his girlfriend holding Mckayla. I don't think Stephanie was ready for this pic.

This is a picture of my grandmother, Matt, Mckayla, and Stephanie.

Here is a picture of Mya, my niece.
Christmas night, we spent the night with my parents and the next morning did our Christmas together. It amazes me every year how many presents we have to open. Just look at all of these presents...

This pile is for my sister, her husband, and their two girls...
This is my mom surrounded by all of her presents...
This is part of my pile and Tatum's pile.(Antonio had to go home Christmas night because he had to work on the 26th, so he had already gotten all of his presents.) Here is the other part of my pile and Tatum's pile of presents...
Here is just a LITTLE bit of my dad, Matt, and Stephanie's piles.
One of Tatum's favorite presents was her raincoat with matching boots...

Back in January of this year, my mom adopted 2 dogs from the Humane Society. As you may well know, the Humane Society 'fixes' the dogs before letting them be adopted.....or so we thought. One of her dogs has managed to have 2 litters of puppies since Jan. The last litter came right after Thanksgiving, so this time when we went home, there were 5 little cute puppies running around. After all of the presents were opened and loaded in the car, my mom let us bring in one of the puppies to play with...

I tried SO HARD to talk Antonio into letting us adopt one of these puppies, but he wouldn't let me. They are so cute!!! There are 2 white ones with black and brown spots, 2 are colored like a German shepherd, and the one in the pics is all black. If you (or anyone you know) is interested in a giving one of the precious puppies a good home, let me know and I will see if I can talk my mom out of letting some go.

Christmas Round 3-Antonio's Family

Christmas morning, we headed to Antonio's parent's house for Christmas with his family. Here is a picture of Tatum with her 2 cousins Gabby and Caiden...

Antonio's mom has a new dog and Tatum LOVES dogs. Here are the two of them 'meeting' for the first time...
In the picture below is Tatum, Eliana (Antonio's sister), Chris (Eliana's husband) and the dog.
Next is a pictre of Antonio's parents with Tatum...
Gabby and Tatum...

Antonio's mom had a tree for each grandchild decorated in things they like. Tatum's was decorated in pink and brown like her room is.
Tatum loved the tree and loved taking the little balls off of it. I am not sure Nana would have liked this very much if she had caught Tatum in the act of doing this.

Gabby has all the sudden starting LOVING Elvis. She LOVES his music, thinks he is a cutie, and is just into anything Elvis, so we decided to get her some Elvis things for Christmas. One of her things we got her was this Elvis t-shirt. As soon as she opened it, she ran and had to change so she could wear it all day.
We stayed for a few hours to visit and then it was on to the next stop...to be continued...

Christmas Round 2-Christmas Morning

Tatum must have been VERY good this year because Santa came and left her lots of new things. Here is a picture of what was under the tree when we all woke up on Christmas morning...


Tatum woke up in a great mood and I think she may have been a little overwhelmed by all the new toys and things that were out when she got up.
However, she did notice her VeggieTales t-shirts that Santa left.
She also loves her new toy that goes on the fridge. It makes all kinds of animal noises.
We didn't have much time to play with all of the new toys that Santa left because we had to get ready and go to Antonio's parent's house. That will be in the next blog, so to be continued....

Christmas Round 1-Christmas Eve

For Round 1 of our Christmas celebrations, we headed to Jackson to spend time with my mom's side of the family eating, singing, and catching up with each other. Here are just a few pictures from the night.

First off, here is a picture of Mya and Tatum...

Tatum and Daddy...

My sister Laurie taking pictures with her new camera...

When this side of the family gets together, we all do lots of singing. Here is a picture of some of the kids singing together.
Since we didn't have to be in Jackson until 6pm and I didn't have to work this day, I decided to do something a little different with my hair. I call this my "holiday hair." It took about 20 minutes to do it, but I felt like a new woman....lol...
Here are a couple of pictures of me and Tatum. I am trying to be better about getting in front of the camera from time to time so that Tatum will be able to look back and know that I was there.

Here is my grandmother, Tatum's Gran, with Tatum and Mckayla.
We ate well while in Jackson and got to see family that we don't see very often. Unfortunately, there were many out of town family members that were unable to make it this year. Hopefully they will be able to make it next year.