Swallow Family Blog : Dec 2022 Part 2

We started off Christmas Eve with a family movie! Tyler chose Avatar 2. Everyone was super into it. Lyla did great until it was a little more intense then we anticipated. She was great when she was able to get her wiggles out in the hall. Grayson only had to pee like 3 times so he's SURE that he's ready for an all day college baseball even at the new Ranger's stadium in February.

We spent the rest of the evening at Kenney and Teresa's doing our favorite Christmas Eve traditions! We did graham cracker Nativities and had Christmas Eve dinner.

Peep Teresa's photogenic photobomb.

After dinner we acted out the Nativity Story and opened Christmas PJs.

Christmas morning arrived at our house at a decent hour. The kids just sleep. We had to wake Lyla up around 730. Maybe they just haven't figured it out, yet. We opened a few things and then got ready for church. Each of the kids got a Harry Potter wand. They keep stealing straws and spoons and the like to cast spells around the house. It was time they had something proper. The wands received a gasp from each child and it's so fun to watch them enjoy something so simple.

Santa always remembers the puppies.

Grayson has wanted a large stuffed snake for a VERY long time. Being his mother, who spends the most time with him and listens to him the most, I have known this fact. When this snake went on sale I had to REALLY convince Tyler to buy it and he groaned when he saw how huge it was. UNTIL, he heard the boy talk about it, too. I made sure to note this on the wrapping and many people were very curious about what was inside. Grayson loves it, by the way, just like I knew he would.

I love when Christmas lands on a Sunday. It can be a wonderful musical opportunity. I got to play the organ and the primary children sang two songs. This year we matched in dark green. My skirt matched but it's hard to see in the picture. We always have multiples, because: shenanigans from the the children and their faces.

After church, Christmas continued to explode everywhere. Sadly, we had to clean it all up quickly on Monday morning.

Mitch's family arrived on Monday and we did lots of fun things!
First we went to the zoo. We went on half price day and the Fort Worth Zoo is a GREAT zoo. I highly recommend it and will take visitors when they are here! It was a beautiful day! Just the right temperature.

This ostrich walked really close to me. He paused and looked right at me, only to take the biggest, wettest ostrich poop. Ever.

Next on the list was Tornado Terrys. You pay for a wristband and can play all the arcade games for as long as you want. Our wrist bands even came with tokens for the 15 games that gave tickets. I had my doubts about the children staying occupied at this place once the tokens ran out. I had to take it back. We started playing and 5 hours later we realized we had been there for 5 hours! And, the children were still interested and continued to play. It's a genius business plan, because you get to learn how to play all the games without the risk of losing all your tokens on a "dumb" game. It was clean, had a great variety of games and we had the place to ourselves for most of our time there. I was so happy that they had guitar hero. I played it so many times. We quickly discovered that the bowling game gave the most tickets. Everyone was able to get a prize they wanted because we had so many tickets between the 5 of us!

Mitch also brought his Oculus VR. It was a HOT commodity. Everyone wanted to play, all the time. Tyler would like everyone to know he set a record or two on the Hot Shot game.

The weather held up and we were able to have a backyard fire. Kenney took us all to his friends BBQ in Ennis and we HAD to stop at Buc-ee's on the way.

On New Year's Eve there was time to help Kenney and Teresa move the last of their things into their new house so they could be out of their rental. I stayed behind to prep the snacks and house for everyone to come back to.

It is now tradition to take a picture with all these birth year buddies. It's fun to watch them grow. Too soon, it was time to say goodbye to all our visitors. We stayed up way too late, ate way too much junk and had too much fun. I enjoy seeing these kids pick up right where they left off. I hope they appreciate the wonderful cousin time they got.