Christmas updates...... Saturday 12-22-12

Well, I have been sick and I don't mean just a little sick, but sick with a upper respiratory cold where I have coughed so hard all of my ribs hurt when I cough (front and back) and I hear rattling in my lungs ever since everyone left from New Years.....so with some TLC from my loving husband and staying in bed for 4 days straight drinking lots of orange juice and taking good medicine, I am back to normal pretty much!  Now I need to post all the pictures and tell about all the family fun we had this Holiday Season together!!  Because I have been dying to blog about it.  It was pretty much as perfect as a Holiday can be.  For the first time in 14 yrs all of my siblings and most of their families were all here to have Christmas with Dad and Barbara!  That was very cool for many reasons, but especially for my Dad, he was pretty emotional the whole time.  It was a special Christmas for all of us!!

But most of all this Christmas was really special for Alan and I because it is the first time in several years that all of our Children have been here together for Christmas.  There is nothing like having all your children with you in Church, having all your children there for all the traditions, and to see all the Christmas socks that I have made all hung up on my fireplace, when many years there have been some missing as they have been at in-laws, or not able to come home due to work when you work at a hospital, but when Christmas falls like it did this year, or on the weekend, then we are happy to fly Anne Marie here for some great memories if we can get 3 days together we are in heaven!  And this year we got 4!!

Anne Marie flew in on Saturday and was in Ft. Worth at 10:00 am.  Allison and John drove in after Allison had a photo shoot and were here about 12:00.  We all went to lunch at Chili's and then visited Barnes and Noble so that they could say hi to Dad (Alan) as he had his first year of Retail....no days off for Retailers!! 

We then went to get Anne Marie's hair cut.  I wish I had thought to take a before and after picture.  This is something that we have been trying to help her get done for probably 6 to 8 months....always thinking we were going to get it done at one time or another and then running out of time etc... so we would not be detoured this time.  When Anne Marie took her hair out of the clip, I could not believe how long it was.....almost to her waist in back...really!!  I did remember to take pictures while it was being cut when she was almost done...but if you see the pile of hair on the floor you will see that her haircut was a major change and she looked beautiful when it was done.

That is a lot of hair in the pile of hair.....it was way long...

1st time all together since John and Allison graduated from BYU in April!!

We had Cousin's BBQ that night and played cards as is our family tradition!!