Christmas blog

Our Christmas began last week with a new addition to our very large family. My cousin gave birth to a new baby girl Jaelynn Paige Robbins. After inducing her labor for two days, they had to deliver the baby by C-section. I had the honor of being at the hospital when she was born. She is absolutely beutiful, and I cannot wait to babysit!

Ten minutes after Jaelynn was born

This is Lindsey's sister, Christina, holding Jaelynn. As you can see, she was crying.
My aunt Debbie stepped in and took over the role of "mom" for Lindsey. Her mother, my aunt Janet, passed away a few years ago. Aunt Debbie is a great surrogate.

When I went back to the hospital to spend time with the baby and Lindsey, I forgot my camera. I didn't get any pics, but I am sure there are plenty to come.

Now, on to Christmas. This year I decided that I would make some very nice gift baskets for my family. I figured that they would really mean something, and Brendon loves to help me in the kitchen, so we did it. I spent about 5 nights baking, and then one nine hour day working on it. Brendon was a great helper, and Eric washed the massive dishes that I piled up. These baskets were truly a family effort. When all was said and done, I was very proud of all of us. They looked great. Everything in them was baked from scratch. The baskets included: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Toll house (chocolate chip) cookies, sausage cheese balls, chocolate covered pretzels, peanut-pretzel bark, caramel corn, hot chocolate with marshmellows, a cheese ball with crackers, and banana nut bread.

On Christmas Eve, we all went to Eric's mom's house. She definately went all out for Christmas. I was really blown away by all of the gifts she got us. We had a great time with Eric's family, and I am looking forward to being able to call them family when we are married.

Before we left we took some pics in front of our tree.

This was the beginning of the chaos at Becky's house.

Brendon and Hailey opened their first gifts.

This is what it looked like a little later.

And about 30 minutes into the unwrapping...

After we got home on Christmas eve, we laid out cookies and milk for Santa and all of us went to bed. We told Brendon to come wake us when he woke up. We were expected for him to wake up at 5am, but we woke up before Brendon! He did get up at about 6:30. He was so excited about all of his gifts. He got a Wii, and was elated about it. We played it all day on Christmas, I think the adults like it as much as he does.

Brendon going to check out his gifts from Santa

Mom, I got a Wii!!!

Stocking stuffers...

Look at all that Santa brought for me!

Eric and Brendon checking out how to use his new Nintendo DS

On Christmas day, it was time to see my family. We went over to my mom and dad's house to have a delicious meal. Every year for Christmas, my mom's company gives her a large meal from Reed's fine foods in downtown Charlotte. This year we decided to eat it on Christmas. It was delicious! My parent's gave me and Eric a video camera, and as they gave it to us they said this, "We know that you are going to give us more grandbabies soon, so we thought you could use a camcorder. Hint hint" Anyway, a camcorder means lots of video on blogs. Woo hoo!

Me and my mom in front of her tree

Me and Eric at my mom and dad's house

We truly had an amazing Christmas. I feel very blessed to have such a wonderful family.

In order to remember those that are less fortunate, my small group from church, me, Eric, Brendon, and my brother will all be going to serve 120 men lunch at the Charlotte Rescue Mission next Sunday. Our churches mission is to serve those in need of help. We are going to start really doing alot of community service in the upcoming year. It has become a priority for me and Eric to really start teaching Brendon that serving and helping those in need is more rewarding than any gift that you could recieve.