Our 2009 Christmas Season Review!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We sure did. I feel like we have done a lot of different things in the past couple of weeks so I thought I'd just post a whole bunch of pictures for your viewing pleasure.

One of our favorite things to do each Christmas season is drive around in the car looking for Christmas lights. Well, I hope all of you that live here in Oklahoma got to see the lights at Chesapeake. They were AMAZING!!! This picture doesn't do it justice. There were lights all over the campus and up and down both sides of Grand Avenue. They were LED lights in purple, pink, green, blue, red and white. If you missed it, you need to go check them out before they take them down. Another fun thing we did was attend Hayden's dance recital. Oklahoma Gold Gymnastics offers a class that is half dance/half gymnastics and it goes back and forth between ballet and tap each session. This was the end of a tap session so they did a tap dance to "Frosty the Snowman". It was very cute and Hayden is quite the performer (I have no idea where she got that!). At one point she stopped dancing to point at me and then to her to make sure I was getting her on film. It cracked me up. Here is the video:

Make a Smilebox greeting

Here's a couple of still shots:

Hayden with Coach Melinda:

With her favorite friend at dance class, Jaycie:

We had Christmas with Ryan's parents and brother the Saturday before Christmas because that's when Nathan could come home from Brooklyn. It's a really good thing he came early because, had he planned to fly in right before Christmas, it wouldn't have happened due to the weather. I didn't take many pictures that day but I did get a really cute one of Hayden and her Chippy right after she had decorated his head with a bow..
Tim and Sherry got Hayden a really cute pink sweater and some pink "ugg" boots from Target and I just had to take a pic of her all dressed up the next day because I thought she looked sooo cute.Well, we were snowed in on Christmas eve but we still had a great day watching the blizzard and staying warm by the fire. In the late afternoon we took our bath and got on our Christmas jammies and slippers.Hayden then helped me make sugar cookie dough and we cut it out into Christmas shapes and baked them in the oven. Hayden then got to paint some cookies with food coloring to leave out for Santa.
Before she went to bed she picked the perfect spot to set out Santa's cookies and milk on the fireplace hearth.As we were reading bedtime stories, we heard Santa's jingle bells from his sleigh outside Hayden's window! She was VERY excited! We told her that meant he was in the neighborhood but he couldn't come in until he knew she was sleeping. The next morning she woke up to find all the cookies and milk gone, a letter from Santa and lots of presents to open. It was a great Christmas morning.

We then piled in the car and went back to my in-laws' house to hang around for the afternoon. Hayden had tons of fun playing in the snow. Here she is making a good snowball:

With Mommy in the snow:
Helping Chippy and Daddy make the snowman:
The finished product! We then went to my parents house for dinner. She had a wonderful time playing with Tinkertoys with her Pa-Pa and getting rides on his shoulders.
And for one last Christmas present for Hayden (and me!) was the new addition to our family:Tux!!!!

He is a whippet and the sweetest boy! I don't have many pictures of him yet. I will post a lot more soon! Here's one in the car on the way home from the breeder's house in Tulsa.

We hope you had a wonderful 2009 and that you have a Happy New Year!