A Kentucky Christmas

Christmas preparations began before Reese's arrival. We purchased the tree a week before she made her appearance. And we also had a very special opportunity to visit with Santa Claus himself. As opposed to previous years where we met the jolly old man at the mall, this year one of Callie's friends had an evening with Santa gathering. This meant that we didn't have to wait in line and Callie could get used to the idea of being near St. Nick.



We managed to get a pretty good family picture. Unfortunately, Callie never got comfortable enough to sit on his lap by herself. But she did get up the courage to tell him that she wanted a baby sister for Christmas. This made her parents heart melt.

And as we all know, Santa came through early on Callie's wish when Reese arrived a full two weeks before Christmas. And as you can see, she came ready to deck the halls and spread holiday cheer. Actually, the hat was a gift from afar, as the days before Christmas brought to Kentucky some of Santa's elves from Sacramento. Grammy Gayle, Uncle Zac, and Keith arrived just in time to put the finishing touches on the holiday preparations.


The first order of business was putting the construction management specialist in charge of the assembly of the gingerbread house. Zac led a solid team of workers who overcame some icing issues to put together a great looking piece of gingerbread architecture. And this time around Callie's candy decoration intake was kept to a minimum by Dad, the safety inspector. A good time was had by all.


Grammy Gayle enjoyed meeting her newest granddaughter and jumped at the chance to take a photo with Reese and Callie. The only girl missing from this picture is Cheyenne, but we can get a better group photo next year at Thanksgiving.



Also included in the picture is our fully decorated tree, which managed to keep all of its needles on until Christmas. We have realized, however, that with all of the ornaments we have collected over the years, it is time to start bringing home bigger trees. We'll keep that in mind next December.

As you can imagine this Christmas morning was special in a number of ways. But perhaps most special of all, both our girls gave us sleeping presents. Reese had a five-hour stint, and Callie didn't wake up until 8:45am. It made for a more enjoyable morning for everyone. But Callie was also very excited to get downstairs to see if Santa and his reindeer had visited and eaten the cookies and apples we left out the night before. She was not disappointed.

Once we made it downstairs, true to form, we made Callie and Reese take a family picture before they could touch their stockings. We have a picture like this at Callie's first Christmas when we were in Madison. It's fun to have our first one with Reese in front of our own fireplace, stockings, and tree.



Once her obligations to her parents were met and the flashbulbs dimmed, Callie was allowed to take down her stocking and begin the serious business of unwrapping.

It is important to note that Callie's stocking is almost as tall as she is. We may live to regret purchasing such monstrosities for stockings, but they are quite attractive. In any case, Callie was very excited to reach in and pull out goody after goody. And this was not a short process. All in all it took about 45 minutes for her to pull out and open the gifts Santa put in there for her. But her favorite was definitely the glitter Hello Kitty lipgloss. Somewhere out there are photos of her making John put on some of this wonderful stuff. We chose not to include them here.


Another prized possession was a wind-up musical matchbox deal that received attention from everyone in the room. Grammy Gayle took on the responsibility of showing Callie how it worked. Overall, we spent a lot of time admiring Callie's presents long after we had opened our own.


As we moved on to the gift exchange portion of the morning, Callie was once again overcome with joy. Uncle Zac and Keith gave Callie the tree tent pictured here. They set it up immediately and Callie needed everyone to get in the tent and hang out. She also moved all of her remaining presents in there. And it was quite nice to see that she was happy to leave quite a few presents wrapped while she played with those already opened. All told, it took her three days to open all of the gifts she received for Christmas.

Overall, this was a great Christmas. We had a great visit with the California crew, and Kentucky came through and provided a white Christmas for us all. This post could have been even longer if we had included all of the great pictures of snow shoveling, game playing, and just hanging out. The only problem, as always, was that the visit ended too soon.

There's a theory out there that you should always lead with your strongest story, argument or photo. We say, end each post with a bang. Or at the very least, give a prize to those who stick with us through the whole thing. You may remember a picture of a young Callie lying next to our Thanksgiving turkey. We did not want Reese to feel left out. With that said, we now present to you a special composition we call, Reese with Christmas Ham.



As we write this there is just over an hour left in 2010. It has been an amazing year for our family and we are thankful for being blessed with two beautiful and healthy girls. We look forward to watching them grow in 2011 and wish you and yours all the best. Happy New Year!!!