December 21-30, 2012: Christmas!

The weekend before Christmas, the kids and I made cookies together...peanut butter with kisses, snickerdoodles, and chocolate chip...

The week leading up to Christmas the kids had special dress up days at school.  First was 'red shirt day'...

'Crazy hat day'...

'Pajama day' (Bryn was not in a good mood this morning)

And finally they had their holiday party at school.  They shared a pot-luck meal with their classmates and exchanged a book with a friend.  It was fun for Nick to be off this day and part of the festivities...

On Sat, Dec 22nd the kids opened their gifts from Mal and Dal...

These are the winter hats that Rachel, Meha and I used to wear!! Mal passed them on to Pres and Bryn...

The boys all got mustaches...

Later that night, Tippy did crafts with the kids making ornaments...

And then we went to Henk's for some German food and acordion dancing :)

 Sun, Dec. 23rd we spent the day playing games and snacking at the Lingerfelts house...

 That night Nick and I surprised the family by getting a limo van to fit all 14 of us and take us around to see Christmas lights...

 Here was one of our favorite houses with the dancing Santa's...

 On Christmas Eve we started off the day with a belly dancing class for 'just the girls' :)  (Yes, there's a baby Trey bump which made belly dancing a little difficult)

 That afternoon we exchanged more gifts and Bryn was given her biggest present from the Smith's...

 Christmas Eve night, in our matching jammies...

We all gathered around to listen to Cameron read the Christmas story from the Bible and then we listened to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' sent to the kids by Uncle Tim and Aunt Debbie...

We set out cookies and egg nog for Santa, carrots for Rudolph...

 Christmas morning the kids woke up so excited!  Here are some of their favorite gifts from Santa.  Bryn got 'Brie' as she named her baby who looks very familiar :)

Liam got a whoopie cushion that everyone surprisingly sat on :)

 His reaction hearing the whoopie cushion...love it!

 Princess Brynnie and her chapstick "lipstick" that she puts on like 12 times a day...

 A new tea cart...

 A Cars math work book...

 Just 2 of the 15 board games that the kids got overall...yes, we really love board games :)

Blocks and Rip Klutchskonski (the Polish car who was the only one missing from his World Grand Prix team)...

 Our new beautician...

When asked what his favorite part of Christmas was, Liam answered, "The snow!!"  We had a beautiful (rare) white Christmas!

We had so much fun with the whole family in town, playing cards, games, eating and just hanging out together...

 After Christmas, we drove to Brenham, TX to gather with the whole Barker clan and see Grandma Barker.  We had a fun lunch and it was great to see everyone.  We also got to see Pops and Nana's new house under construction later in the week...

 We headed to Grandpa and Grandma's that night and had Christmas with them...

 Fri, Dec 28th we got to hang out with cousins Carson and Mayce again for the day...

 More games :)

 Decorating cookies...

 Saturday night we had dinner with Ryanne and Kaitlynn, and then Nick, Linds and JE set off some fireworks in the neighborhood for the kids...

 As you can see, we had a great family-filled holiday and are so blessed to have most of our family close by again.  2012 ended well for the Barkers and we can't wait to see what 2013 holds in store for us!