The many faces of Claire on Christmas day!

Had to share these fun reaction photos I got while Claire opened her gifts this year! She was definitely happy with her presents!

So awesome to see such happiness from our beautiful daughter! God is so good!

 

Christmas morning!

Christmas morning always begins with monkey bread for breakfast! Yummy!

After filling up on sugar, we decided to start the day off with the saran ball game. This was lots of fun and we all got lots of unusual gifts!

Claire got a few presents for the dogs to keep them entertained while we opened gifts. She also got them some sweaters to wear since we had such a cold front come through!

We got this amazing gift of chocolates all the way from Germany. Owen's friend, Florian, sent it to us. We hosted him over the summer and his family sent it as a thank you! Delicious!

 

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Ever since Claire was little, she has made a birthday cake for Jesus and on Christmas morning we sing "Happy birthday" to Jesus. This year she feels she made her best cake yet!

This young lady is very happy with her finished product! It tasted very good too!

 

Merry Christmas!

We had a peaceful, quiet Christmas this year. The Saturday before Christmas we went to a Christmas show at Second Baptist which was very good.

Since Jeff had to work on Christmas Eve, we went to church for the Christmas Eve Eve candlelight service on Friday evening. It was beautiful!

Rare that Claire wears her hair down. Even more rare that she lets me take a picture of her outside of the sanctuary at church!

 

Father/daughter Cotillion dance practice

Jeff and Claire had dance practice last night. It is the expectation that they both dress up for the event. I have to say, they both clean up really nice! Blessed to call these two beautiful people my family!

Be still my heart...please stop growing up so fast.

 

Claire is driving????

So, this happened yesterday!!! Jeff wanted to start teaching Claire the basics of driving. They spent about 20 minutes going over the controls of the vehicle and the most important parts of driving.

Then....this happened! Claire did really well and is super excited to practice more. I sat in the back with my eyes closed most of the time...this momma isn't quite ready for this next huge step!

 

Sugarland Holiday Lights

We went to Sugarland to the Holiday Lights on Saturday evening. It was really neat with tons and tons of lights and themes throughout the stadium.

The North Pole section was Claire's favorite!

They also had a carnival so Claire and I had to go on the Scrambler (I think this is her favorite ride ever...other than Space Mountain and the People Mover at Disney World)!

This was definitely "carnival" quality, no padding at all on the seats. Wasn't the best feeling when Claire would slam into me but we had fun nonetheless!

Of course, we had to get some carnival food. Claire went with a huge corn dog!

 

A tree named "Fred"...

Claire really wanted a tree for her bedroom. We made an agreement that once she had her science project completely finished, we would take her to the store to buy one. She worked hard and fast on her science project to finish in time to make it to the store last night!

She started with a string of lights...

Have to look all over to see where more balls need to be hung!

 MamaLu commented that she needed to be wearing her elf slippers while decorating, so on they went!

                                                  

A few more balls to place...

and ta-da....meet Claire's tree, "Fred"! Claire paid for it all with her own babysitting money! Something she is proud of for sure! It is a perfect addition to her room for the holidays!

December Cotillion night!

Our beautiful young lady, all dressed up and ready for her Cotillion night! Time to learn some more dances and a little more etiquette as well!

 Annalee, Abigail, and Claire...three beautiful ladies ready to dance!

Decorating for Christmas

When Dad is unable to do the outside decorations due to his arm surgery, the ladies of the house had to step in and do what we could! This year, we only have lights around the garage, but at least it is something. This was very painful for Jeff to watch and he had to take multiple trips into the garage to a spot where he couldn't see what was happening!

Once we finished with the lights, Jeff put Claire back to work on cleaning out the gutters. Of course, Jeff couldn't help himself and had to get up on the ladder to supervise!

Our Christmas tree! Getting it out of the attic wasn't too difficult without Jeff's help. Getting it back up in the attic might prove to be a different story....we shall see!