Christmas Tour 2011

Well, just like our typical life, our Christmas was filled with lots of family and traveling!  This year, our Christmas parties actually started the weekend before Thanksgiving!  The "girls" at work decided that we would have our party before Thanksgiving due to all the conflicts that we seem to run into with having it during the actually Christmas season.  As the past parities have gone, it was a true blast - we had great presents, lots of Chicken and tons of laughs!

The first weekend of December, we had Barlow Family Christmas.  This is Christmas with Stephen's mom's side of the family.  We had it in Shuqualak, MS at Aunt Edna's house.  It is always nice to get to visit with Stephen's aunt & uncles from that side of the family.  Christmas is typically the only time of the year we get to visit with all of them.  Below are some cute pics from the weekend....

Luke giving Thomas a hug :)

Thomas and his modeling pose!

My two favorite boys!!!

The following Monday, we drove to Starkville to take Luke's picture with "a real looking Santa".  It was definitely an encounter with Santa for us to remember with Luke.  He loved Santa as long as Santa was not trying to hold him!  It was precious and below are some pics that we captured to remember this moment!

Checking out Santa from a distance....

Still walking around checking out Santa....

This is Luke smiling and laughing at Santa....

But when he got in Santa's lap, he did not want any part of Santa!!

Get me out of this strange man's arms - I only like him from a distance!!!

I love this picture, even though my baby boy is upset!  I gave him some marshmallows trying to make things better!  Better luck next year?

Then, on the second weekend of December, we drove to Burnt Oak (just south of Arestia - between West Point & Macon) on Friday night for a Christmas party with Mrs. Patsy's work (Stephen's mom) and then on Saturday we drove back down to West Point for dinner at Anthony's for a friends birthday.  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures at any of these two events.

On the 3rd Monday of December, we drove to Booneville for the Christmas parade.  Luke absolutely loved the parade!  He just sat in his wagon and watch everyone that drove by.  He even started waving and saying "HEY!" to all the beauty queens that rode by.  The loud sirens from the firetruck or police cars did not bother him one bit.  He even wore his sweet moose toboggan the entire time!

This Ty Stephenson and Allie Wilburn (member of the church) posing for a picture with Luke before the parade starts in their cute tobboggans !  

Yes, they are gonna be up to no good together soon!

Allie loves Luke and loves playing with him!

I got my juice and snacks so let the parade begin!

The weekend before Christmas, we drove down to Forest to visit with my Family.  I had picked up some Christmas present for Amy to give to her in-law side of the family so she needed them before the next weekend.  Stephen and I went with Amy & Chris to play Bunco with Amy's Bunco group (it was their couples Christmas Party Bunco night) while Luke got to spend some quality time with his Mimi & Poppy (my parents).  And thankfully, Luke finally started playing with Poppy!  It made Poppy's weekend!  Usually when we are down visiting my family, Luke only wants to see his Aunt Amy or his Mimi and would squeal when Poppy tired to hold him.  But this trip, Luke & Poppy got to play doctor with Poppy and I hope that the next trip down that Luke will continue to want to play with his Poppy.  (Sorry, no pictures from this trip either - I forgot the camera).

And now we have finally made it to the week of Christmas - are you tired yet?  By this point, we were very tired and had put over 2000 miles on the "new" car (new to us is).  Speaking of being tired - this seems like a good place to stop for the night.  I promise I will post tomorrow about our Christmas weekend for anyone that is still following us!!!!  :)