Christmas 2009: Part 1

We headed to Arlington last week to celebrate Christmas with Robert's family. On Christmas Eve we finished up our shopping (we were so on the ball this year), had the not so successful trip to see Santa (see below) and enjoyed some good quality time with our family. Robert's Ma found a couple of remote-controlled cars for Claire that also ended up keeping Robert and his cousins pretty entertained. Claire was more interested in chasing after the cars (or running away from them) and picking them up.

Christmas morning was so much fun with our traditional brunch (including breakfast casserole, Ma's famous coffee cake and lots of coffee) before moving on to looking at our stockings. Claire had so much fun pulling everything out of her stocking.

She was really excited by her "phone" that Santa brought her and spent a lot of time "making calls" on it!

Every year there are some interesting surprises in the stockings, as Robert's cousin Mike demonstrated.

I managed to get our from behind the camera for a photo with my authentic Texas dollar bill.

We moved on to unwrapping presents, and Claire loved her perch on the rocking chair that belonged to her great-grandfather Bob and that her daddy hung his stocking on every Christmas until Claire came along.

Almost everyone was able to make it, but we sure missed Aunt Carol and Robert's aunt Susie.

Tom


Ashlee & Ma


Lee & Mike


Bob, Gayle & Clark

Claire had a good time unwrapping her presents. She raked it in, as usual.

One of the cutest things was watching her feed her baby doll. She figured out what to do right away, and liked sharing the bottle with her baby.

We had such a great time as always! Coming next, Christmas with the "B" great-grandparents!