Our Christmas this year was a little different from years past because we went to Colorado for the Perkins Family Reunion from Dec. 21-27, so we had to switch things up a bit to make it all work. Usually, we have to squeeze all of our Christmas gatherings with family all into a few days, but not this year. I acutally like how it all worked out because I got all my shopping done early. It all seemed a bit less hectic and stressfull, which was nice.
We ended up going to Dallas to do Christmas with my family on the first weekend in December. It was a whirlwind of a trip but fun! It also happened to be Grandpa's birthday that weekend, so we started out by celebrating his birthday at Casa Milagro, the restaurant they go to every Friday night. We had a fun day the next day opening gifts, playing games, eating good food, and just being together. Then, we headed over to Mammy's Saturday night for our annual Christmas cookie decorating. Sunday, we opened more gifts with Mammy and got to hang out a bit before heading back to Austin that afternoon.
Since we were going to be traveling by airplane and would be away from home on Christmas day, we asked Santa if he could come to our house on the 15th, and he kindly said yes! So, we celebrated our family Christmas early and still included all our little traditions. The boys thought it was great that Santa came to our house early. It was like a special treat from Santa! Eli even wrote a letter for Santa, which said, "We hope that you have a safe trip home. Signature______. Are we the first? Yes or No____. To Santa from The Perkins". Santa even signed it and told us that we weren't the first ones. I thought we were for sure!
The afternoon we had our Christmas, John had to go to Dresden for work. He was gone the 15th-19th, which means that a couple days after he got back, we all had to leave for CO. This was the first time that it wasn't too hard when he was gone, thankfully! Maybe it's because I was trying to pack for our CO trip the whole time. The night we picked John up from the airport, we thought it would be fun to go see The Trail of Lights. It was a great idea until John's plane was delayed, which meant that we got to the trail of lights late, which means the boys were up late. I just wanted to squeeze it in and make it work, but it was a bad idea. To top it off, there were so many people there that night that we could barely walk and the boys couldn't see the light displays very well at all. The Zilker tree was fun to see though! Oh well, a memory was made in the end!
Ah, the Perkins Family Reunion...so glad that's over and done with! It was great to see everyone and fun to be in the snowy mountains, however, the stomach virus that we all passed around was awful! Out of the 21 of us, only two that I know of didn't get sick. I was the last adult to get it, so the whole time I felt like I was walking around in fear of getting the bug. It got me day we left, but luckily it wasn't too bad. We did get to do some sledding, and the cousins had plenty of playtime with each other, including some craft time and snowball fights. Our travel time to and from Colorado was miserable due to flight delays and getting home at 1:00 am when we returned. I think it took us a full week to recover after we got back from our trip. We will look back at the PFR 2012 and laugh...someday!
Here is Max in the cutest snow suit ever!
This snowsuit may have made our trip all worth it!
Here's Jed at his Christmas program at school. He's right in the middle with the Spiderman Santa shirt. I loved how they sang this song...YES! Jesus Loves Me!...
This is Mammy's dancing/singing snowman, which Max loved to play over and over and dance to it!
This year for the 4th of July, we went up to Dallas to hang out with family. While we were there, we found out about a special event at the Amazing Jake's fun center at the mall...breakfast with Spderman! Knowing that Jed is a huge fan of Spiderman, we knew we couldn't miss this! So, everyone headed out to the mall at 8:00 on Saturday morning to go eat some breakfast at the buffet and meet Spiderman. Most of us were excited to see Jed meet Spiderman, but I think Grayson and Garrett were way more excited about the breakfast buffet! We ended up spending half of the day there playing games, riding go karts, playing mini golf and lazer tag, plus riding the carousel and the little train. We got our money's worth and stayed for the lunch buffet as well. Jed loved the whole experience, but his only regret was that he didn't get to wear his Spiderman costume since we left it at home in Austin.
Breakfast!
The big kids are still fans!
Lazer Tag
Riding go karts w/ cousin Grayson
Mammy was brave enough to ride w/ Garrett driving!
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Our Christmas this year was a little different from years past because we went to Colorado for the Perkins Family Reunion from Dec. 21-27, so we had to switch things up a bit to make it all work. Usually, we have to squeeze all of our Christmas gatherings with family all into a few days, but not this year. I acutally like how it all worked out because I got all my shopping done early. It all seemed a bit less hectic and stressfull, which was nice.
