What's this white stuff??

I do have to say I'm a big fan of Christmas. I love all the decorations, and I even made my own wreath for the front door this year (but no picture, sorry). A week or so ago i put up our Christmas tree, and Jason and I decorated it together.  Here's our tree... darn flash and you can't see the lights!  
Here's the lights... but it's blurry.
And here's the tree last night after I wrapped A TON of presents for all the nieces and nephews... one present for each adds up!
I've been told several times that it doesn't snow in Tennessee... or at least not much.  Well then, what do you call all this white stuff?  This is the view from our front porch Thursday night.
Here is my car Friday morning.  There's probably between an inch or two of snow, but it's all melted now.  I laughed really hard when they cancelled school EVERYWHERE around here... no one knows how to drive with any bit of snow... it scares them.
And here's our house Friday morning... just had to get a picture with snow on the ground.
Taco was a big fan of the snow this year.  He ran around and around in the front yard, but I managed to get him to stand still long enough to get this picture.
Here's our mantle... mantel?  Neither of those look right.  Anyway, here it is, sans fireplace, but these are our stockings.  And NO, the little one is not an announcement, it's Taco's stocking. :)  Like our nativity scene?
Lastly, here's just a random picture of Taco.  This is where I usually find him if I get out of my chair to go do something... he likes to take my spot and claim it as his own, and then he won't move out of the way.

Some cousins... and a date

Like I said the other day, I'm trying to catch up on my posting... so here's a post that should have been done last weekend.  Jason and I headed up to Lafayette for the day, and Jason's cousins Emily and Katelyn were there.  Their dad is Uncle Robert, who lives right next to Mammer and Papa Wayne.  Jason had met them previously when I wasn't able to go up there, but this was my first time meeting them... SO more people for me to remember the names of!

Katelyn's on the left and Emily's on the right... and I think we know who the handsome man in the middle is. :)

Of course we had them take a picture of us too...
Then the girls decided to take some self-portraits... the last one was Emily's glamour shot, I guess. ;)


After being in Lafayette all day, Jason and I decided to go on a little impromptu date.  Jason's been wanting to take me to the Opryland Hotel to show me the Christmas lights, so we drove to Nashville to see the lights.  There were a lot of lights outside, but it was cold and we were walking around, so we didn't feel like taking the time to freeze while taking pictures outside.  However, inside was this gorgeous tree... GIANT tree.  
There were also several of these very large wreaths.  It's hard to see because it was so far away and obviously my flash doesn't work for things that far away, but you get the idea.  There's a big chandelier behind it.
And there were a bunch of these things... they're hot air balloons, but they were hanging from the ceiling, so obviously they weren't real, but they were cute.
This is Delta Island (I think that's what it was called).  It's an "island" inside the hotel where there are a bunch of little shops and restaurants.  There's a river inside the hotel, so the river goes around this island.  It was dark outside, so although the entire area in this part of the hotel has a glass ceiling, there wasn't much light... hence all the dark photos.
And this last picture is a picture of the station where we got on one of the riverboats and got a little tour of the hotel... learning about the history and quick little facts too.  We have a picture of us on the boat, but that's coming in our Christmas letters, so if you want one and you don't think I have your address, you better post your address so I can send you one!

So that was our impromptu date.  It was nice to spend a little bit of time with each other again without anyone else.  Our jobs don't allow us to have too much time together since I work regular hours Monday through Friday, and he works 130-10pm on random days, usually weekends included.  Luckily though, Bass Pro is going to be trying to give Jason every other weekend off, so we should get some more time together. :)

Birthday Party...

Well, I was going to post some other pictures too, but my computer is being temperamental, so I'll post this one for now.  November 29th was Gavin's first birthday, so we headed up to Josh and Shannon's to celebrate.  Garrett's fifth birthday is December 15th also, so we celebrated both at the same time.  Here's Gavin eating dinner with his hat on.  I guess he wasn't too thrilled about getting a picture taken while he was eating. ;)
Here's Garrett trying to help Shannon put his new golf clubs together for his Gator Golf game.  He was pretty excited about it.  Notice all the cakes and pies... they definitely weren't all eaten!
Although Gavin didn't get his own cake, he got his own piece of cake, which he promptly grabbed by BOTH hands and put it in his mouth.  This was the scene for about 10 minutes, maybe longer.  This kid LOVES food... too bad we didn't think about taking his clothes off before he had BLUE frosting!
Making sure to get every last bit of frosting off of his hands...
And here's an after picture.  I LOVE that picture!
It was a pretty fun night, and the kiddos got new toys to play with... along with a definite sugar high.  That day had a mix of so many people, that for the next few days, several of us were sick... ugh.  But everyone is better now!

I will post more in the next day or two, once my computer decides to cooperate.  I don't want to get too far behind on my posts!