Christmas

Christmas started with Christmas Eve services at Ellendale.  A lot of our family came in, Dale and Tim, Christy, Fred and Renee, Elzie and Francis, and Mun and Janice for the service and then I cooked a little supper for us all.  It really was great having everyone here.  After dinner everyone but Mom and Dad and Christie left for the night.  We got the boys in bed and then quickly followed behind them.

Christmas morning Fred and I were the first ones up.  We just sat on the couch in the silence and looked at the tree.  It really was peaceful.  

 The boys woke up around 7 and we had wrapped all of their presents, stockings included, in one big box.

 While this was not from us each of the boys got a ticket (from the Burtons) to a Grizzlies game.  Part of the surprise is that they are coming from Paris to go with us.  They treated us to the tickets and now we get to go with them.  Clayton was excited to say the least.  The boys also got money to spend on food at the game.  I don't have Jack's expression, but he was excited about the money.

We had a big breakfast with Mimi, Tee and Christy: sausage pinwheels (a childhood favorite), ham, rolls, eggs, cherry turnover and fruit.  It was delicious.  Fred and Renee even came over since we now live in the same town...epic.  

After breakfast we headed to East Memphis to Fred's parents house.  This is how Fred spent the entire day.  Entire day.  He, along with 7 other family members, had some kind of stomach virus.  Nice.  Needless to say, we will be celebrating Christmas with the Shackelfords on New Years day.  Good times.  

The kids are hip on celebrating Christmas with the grown ups this week, but they did not really want to wait on opening presents.  Who can blame them?!?  

Here Andrew and Zachary are modeling their super hero attire from Uncle Dan and Aunt Tami.  Too sweet.  

Shortly after this we headed home and got Fred in the bed.  In total he slept about 18 hours on Christmas day.  In an effort for the rest of us to not get sick we left him to recover and headed to Jackson to celebrate with my parents, Aunt Christie and my brother's family.  It was a crazy fun time.  We ate, played and marveled that the house was still standing when 5 boys left it the next day.  Fred rolled in Friday morning just in time to open presents.  Then later that day we headed to my grandmother's house to celebrate with the Thomasons.
One of the joys of the Thomason Christmas is having my Uncle Jim in town.  We always go on a long walk together and get a good visit in.  Typically our walk takes us to the campus of Union University, where we both graduated.  I found these while we were there.  Sweet, right?!?  Seems like a lifetime ago...

There will be more celebrations this week as we brought our friend D home for a few days.  We'll go to the Grizzlies game, the Rendezvous, Incredible Pizza and just generally be lazy.  We may still have a few tricks up our sleeve before the end of 2013.