Christmas Lights at Windcrest

Each year our family tries to find a night to drive around looking at Christmas light. My friend Kendra recommended driving over near San Antonio to see the lights at Windcrest. I am so glad we took her advice! We certainly saw some beautiful displays. Here are photos of a few of my favorites:


This house was awesome! The lights were set to music and the line of cars waiting to drive past this one was very long, but so worth the wait.


I loved the decorations outside this house and it appeared from what we could see of the windows the inside must have been spectacular as well!



I absolutely fell in love with the Santa on this porch!

Christmas Day 2009

I hope you and yours had a blessed Christmas Day! I know we did. Tradition at our house has us waking on Christmas morning to find what Santa left in our stockings. Anyone can grab his/her stocking as they wake and it is not necessary to wait upon the rest of the household to awaken to do so. The wrapped Christmas gifts are another story. Those have to wait until everyone is up and ready.

When Heather was little she'd wake at the crack of dawn, (or earlier!)and want to open gifts. Now that she's a teenager she's usually the last to get up.




Heather wrapped one of my gifts with so much tape scissors were necessary!

Marty as he unwrapped his gift from Heather:


Digging in to my box from Missouri!



We added some notes to some of Heather's gifts so she had some reading to do!



Marty and I searched and searched until we found the perfect gift we had in mind for Heather. We wanted her very first diamond to come from us:






Marty's family joined us for Christmas dinner and more gifts:



Marty's twin brother Mike joined us from Iraq via skype on the computer. The highlight of our Christmas day was listening to Mike read us the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke:



My sister in law Debbie, my niece Cheyene, and my nephew Tony:



My mother in law began a tradition a few years ago in which each Christmas day she draws the name of a family member to receive next year's "Gifts from Granny." She lavishes that person with many gifts, most of which are gag gifts that must be opened as they make their way to the big gift. This year was my niece Cheyenne's turn:






Cheyenne and Heather cleaning up:



I made everyone an ornament. Here is Billie with hers:



I think Tony loves his gift from Granny! She folded money into the shape of shirts so he could choose some new shirts for himself:



Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Christmas on the Riverwalk

We always enjoy going to see various Christmas lights displays in our town and surrounding areas. It seems to have become a tradition to walk along the Riverwalk the weekend after Thanksgiving to see the lights there. These are some of my favorite photos taken this year as we strolled with family members who were in town from Wyoming.

Come, stroll along with me. Can you hear the carolers sing as they float by in one of the boats? Can you catch a bit of the excitement of Christmas as you see the amazing lights?

Oh Christmas Tree

For the past 2 years I have decorated 2 Christmas trees in our home. We have a tall artificial tree we place in front of the living room windows each year with all of our special ornaments on it and 2 years ago we purchased a tall skinny rustic looking tree to put in the dining room. This year after watching a Christmas movie together as a family, all 3 of us realized it had been 15 years since we put up a "real" tree and that we had never once all 3 gone out to choose and cut our tree together. So, we decided then and there to do that for this Christmas.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we all got up and headed off to Tannenbaum Farms to choose a tree for the house, and also a tree for the church to decorate to display downtown in Central Park.



Here Marty is cutting the tree for our house:




And this is the tree we selected for the church:





After getting them wrapped and secured atop the Suburban we headed home to await decorations.


This is the church's tree decorated in Central Park:




I decided the real tree needed natural looking and homemade ornaments. Great concept, right?! But in reality, it meant a lot of work. Heather and I spent an entire evening making these ornaments. I spent time over the next few days attaching ribons to hang these and attaching ribbons to pine cones for the tree:


Here is the tree in the living room:


And here it is lit up:



I decided I couldn't bear not to have the regular tree up with all our special ornaments so I put it in the corner of the retreat off the master bedroom:



And then we have the tree in the dining room containing all the gingerbread and apple ornaments, among all the Santa Clause figurines:




Stay tuned for further Christmas festivities we've been checking out!