The Beadle Family: Christmas 2013

As always the holiday's have been extremely busy and hectic so I am just now getting around to doing a post on our Christmas. We ended up staying in town for Christmas and spent it with my family. We would have loved to go up to Massachusetts to see Mikes parents and sister, but it was just going to be too difficult with a newborn and Mike didn't have the time off work to commit to a trip up there. Hopefully we can make it up sometime this year or for the holidays next year. We had a very nice Christmas Eve and Christmas Day spent with my parents and my brother's family. Christmas Eve we attended the Children's mass at 4:30 which includes a little play about the night of Jesus' birth. It went over well with the kids last year so we thought we'd attend it again this year. After mass we headed over to my parents home for the traditional San Antonio Christmas Eve dinner, tamales with chili, Mexican rice, guacamole and queso. We then opened all the presents from the family since Santa doesn't come until later in the night ;-). It was a very nice, laid back Christmas Eve which I just love spending with my family.

James all ready for mass

my dad (Baw Paw) and Jackson before mass

James & Jackson with their cousin Louisa

my handsome little Jackson

Louisa loving on Jackson

James with his twin cousins Wolf and Cece

such a little man

James digging into the presents

James with his new Legos from Nanny and Poppy (these used to be Mike's when he was a kid)

Mike with Jackson

James with is new dinosaur boots which came with a matching rain coat and umbrella

James with is cookies and milk and note for Santa

Gotta leave food for the reindeer too (oats with glitter in it :-))

The next morning James woke up to all of his gifts from Santa. He was definitely thrilled, but a little concerned that we didn't get any gifts from Santa. We told him that we had spoken to Santa and told him that we didn't need anything. It was so sweet that he was worried about us though. After opening gifts we headed over to my parents for Christmas dinner. It was just the five us again, with one new wonderful addition, baby Jackson. We had the same wonderful dinner we usually have, baked brie, smoked salmon, mushroom brie soup and prime rib. It was as always super delicious and we had a lovely time with my parents. I feel very blessed to have them so close by and to be able to experience these wonderful times together.