We spent a wonderful week in Brinkley with my super sweet little brother in our "vacation home" ;-) We are so lucky to have a place we can literally spead out into four different rooms in his house with the Kitchen, two guest rooms and the library which is turned into Emma's play room.
We made it to church on Sunday and it was Emma's 3rd Christmas cantata of the year!
Then right afterwards we went to MeMe and PapPaws for lunch
And we even got to see our cousins who only live 30 miles from us but we never get to see!
That night Emma was surprised by a early Christmas gift from Poppy! Due to our current storage limitations this guy will stay in Brinkley for a while but that just makes it another fun reason to visit Brinkley.
We took advantage of the wonderful weather on Christmas Eve to play outside as well as indoors!
Then after Nana got off work to walk the puppies and for Emma and Michael to get in some fishing.
We even checked out Uncle Denny's tractor graveyard!
Brinkley, Ruby and Gabby
Kalie and Scout
And lastly Dottie
Three generations
Daddy is showing Emma how to thread a weight on the line
That night Grandmother was even able to join us for about 18 hours!! After her long drive we busted out the gingerbread village and had a great time and laugh!! If you have never tried to make these...lets just say that it's NOT easy!
After laughing at us for a while...Hunter decided he would show us how it was done
Emma decided that eating the decorations was the best use of her time!
Sprinkles!
Grandmothers was going down so we all pitched in to try to keep it from going down!!
The finished products
It's hard to see cause it focused on us and not the houses but they really did turn out cute. Cute but not perfect by any means!
Christmas day was filled with family, food and some gifts too. Emma got her first tricycle
And her own tent
Stocking time...and her tongue is out.
FINALLY got my snuggie!! I have been asking for one for 5 years but Michael thought I was joking.
Emma loves to help us clean so she got her very own broom, dust pan and swifter.
Checking out Grandmother glass charms after a bit of strawberries for breakfast.
Here she is!
Morning family shot
Hunter got his own version of a snuggie
We had a little breakfast and then off to MeMe and Pap Paws for lunch. I did mention that there was food?
Three generations
Four
Five or another 4?? Not sure how that would work with the addition of Grandmother.
The fact that Emma was pretty clingy should have alerted me to the fact that she wasn't feeling too good...more to come on that later.
Lisa even came to eat!!
Family shot
Our wonderful hosts!
After lunch at MeMe and PapPaw we made our way over to Nannies. By this time we were already an hour after normal nap time so I didn't even try to get any pictures. :-) Cousin Amber took some so hopefully I will get them from her soon!
But we did get our annual cousin photo.
We thought that we would just miss nap time but it turned out that Emma wanted to lay down on the couch with Michael and I to watch a little Yo Gabba Gabba. And we also took her temp right before that and she was running 101.4 :-(
After a bit of tylenol she woke up feeling much better but that didn't stop us from visiting the doctor on Thursday to get a baby zpack and a new inhaler. While Emma was sleeping the snow started falling and on Wednesday that kept Mom and I from making our trip to Little Rock to shop on the day after Christmas. But the dogs LOVED the snow!
Emma wasn't so sure. :-)
And here Mom and Hunter tried to have a snow fight...but it was really Hunter nailing Mom again and again while he didn't move and Mom still couldn't hit him!
The next day I headed to Hazen to get Brinkley's CBC done and everything was still good so we proceeded with the next round of chemo medications and headed back to Hunters. Michael and Emma decided to travel to Wynne's Walmart for a bit to do and while they were gone I got to lay my eyes on my beautifully pregnant friend Elizabeth! She is glowing and we were just days away from finding out that she was having a little boy!!!
After Michael got home he packed up his stuff and went to deer camp with Hunter to try and get another deer. He wasn't lucky but he was happy he got to go out there and spend time with the uncles and cousins!
Friday we did something we had been wanting to do for at least 7 years and that was make dumplins with Nannie!! Michael wanted to learn exactly how she makes them for me and so her recipe will live on long after Nannie is gone.
It was soooo hard for her to let Michael do it! She just wanted to show him herself!! ;-D
You can tell she's still not 100% but she was well on the mend by this time.
That pretty much wrapped up our week in Brinkley and no matter how much fun we had down there we were all so happy to get back home and get back to a bit of a routine!
Next...our start to the new year!
Be blessed!!
Jill
1 comment:
You have such a sweet family!
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