Christmas: Part 2

And now on to the Christmas extravaganza: part 2! We loaded up the car the Thursday morning before Christmas to head out. Our first stop was my brother's house in west Tennessee. We enjoyed visiting and exchanging gifts with them! The siblings in my family draw names and we each get one gift for one sibling so my brother, Jeremy, and I didn't have a gift to open that night. His kids (Jordan, 12, and Kaylee, 10) thought this was hilarious! Ha!

Chloe Jo was tired and cranky the next morning so this is the picture I got of her with Jordan and Kaylee. Eh, you win some. You lose some.
Friday we headed on to Arkansas to celebrate with Russ' side of the family. We stayed with his brother, Jeremy (we both have brothers named Jeremy. It is very confusing sometimes), and his family. We went over to Russ' parents house that night to hang out. The next evening we had our annual cookie extravaganza! Here are the hosts, Bailey and Jeremy.
Allison (our niece) and Bailey making sugar cookies.
Papaw making no-bake cookies. Yum!
And a few of the cookies we made. I love this yearly tradition. My hips, not-so-much.
During the cookie-making, there was a lot of horsing around by the kids!

Marcus, Alli and David.
Sunday morning, we did presents with Jeremy and Bailey and then headed off to church services. After services, we went over to Russ' parents house to have Christmas dinner and another gift exchange.

Chloe Jo, Alli, Marcus and David.
Russ' brother, Josh, loved the Steelers nutcracker we gave him!
Alli was thrilled to be opening more gifts!
We have played this game several times already!
Nana was very happy with the photo book we gave her and Papaw. I gave a photo book to Russ' parents, my parents and my grandparents. I think they all liked them!
That evening, Russ preached for a congregation there and several of his family and friends joined us at worship service. After that was over, a few of us went back to Russ' parents house and played games. Anyone love Nerts (or some call it Grouch) like we do? I'm always up for a game!
Melba and Debbie have been friends for over 50 years. They met in 1st grade!
Monday we drove around the city (we used to live there) to see what all had changed. We couldn't believe some of the new buildings. We also went by our old place and my parents' old place. It was fun to take a trip down memory lane, but I really don't feel any remorse about moving away from there. After our exploration, we went back to Russ parents' to hang out the rest of the day. We played several games and just visited.

We left Tuesday morning to go to Missouri to spend a few days at my parents home.

Stayed tuned for the last installment of our Christmas!