Christmas...where to begin??

Well, this will probably be a long post. Christmas was wonderful! We made it to TX, despite the snow and were quite happy to find it 30 degrees warmer there. All the siblings were home and it was so fun to just all hang out and enjoy being together. We watched old home movies, (which is one of my favorite things to do, probably because I'm not in them so I just get to laugh at everyone else without any embarrassing moments) we cooked, we saw Christmas lights, we sang Christmas songs, we took a family picture which was an adventure in itself, we ate really, really good TX bbq, we went to some parties, and made lots of other great memories. And of course, we ate the 5 million desserts/cookies/junk foods that were in the house! There's no way to tell about it all in one post, so I'll just post some of my pictures and that'll help give an idea of the fun that took place. This will be rather random...

Of course, one of the highlights was seeing the cutest munchie-girl niece in the whole world!

Uncle Tyler LOVED Violet, as always. It's so fun to watch him with her...he's gonna be a good daddy himself someday!

And I loved lovin' on the girlie too!

I'm so glad we were able to be there for her first Christmas. Of course, she loved the paper best of all.

Megsie and I picked up some good new poses while waiting at the photography studio for our family picture...this is called "Sisters and Friends." It looked much cuter when the 4 year olds in the picture were doing it. It was so good to be able to spend some time with my seester-friend and stay up too late and talk and tell secrets and laugh. I love her!

I love this ornament with Ty and Jordan when they were little---they were so cute!

The girls taught me some tricks with my new camera...some cool...

And some really creepy...Meg will freak out when she sees this...but she took it.


It was discovered that none of the Shaw children had ever heard "The Night Before Christmas" before. So, on Christmas Eve, Tyler's dad read it to us all.

This was my first Christmas without being with my Lawler family. Though I missed them, I realized how blessed I am to have married into a family that I love so much. It was so great to be able to spend Christmas with them and participate in their traditions. I'm so lucky to now have even more family to enjoy! And this year we got double the Christmas fun. We came home Christmas night to a white Colorado Christmas and the next day had Christmas with my family and got to eat more yummy food and hang out with all of them.

Another big highlight of my week was FINALLY getting to see one of my dearest friends, Miss Marybeth Longtine. She was supposed to come home late Friday night and I was going to see her then, but she got stuck in Munich and didn't get home till Saturday. Then I was going to go see her on Christmas night when I got home, but she was so jet-lagged that she was falling asleep. So on Wednesday I saw her and yesterday I saw her and after hours of talking I think we're finally getting caught up after so long apart. I'm so glad to have her home!