Soren and Reese Stories: Christmas 2013

2013 was a wonderful year with so much to be grateful for. The Christmas season was full of family, friends and food as we celebrated the birth of our Savior.

Pete hangs lights up to the tip top of the house. I could barely watch. I was no help at all :)

donut wreath at Reese's Christmas party at school

This is the second year Reese has chosen to get acrylic nails during the holiday break from school. She is not allowed to have them on at school so we go straight from the party on the last day before break to the nail salon. So fun!

Soren decided to get some, too. A fun mother/daughters trip for us

Gymnastics Christmas Party

Holiday Baking!! One of my most favorite things about this season. I play Christmas movies and bake for hours and hours and hours

my helper....

such a mess, but so worth it!

Ok. This one deserves some explanation. We celebrated Christmas at Pops and Nana's house a few days before Christmas Day. Knowing that one of us was going to end up being thrown in the pool (we had not been in yet since it was not complete before the weather turned cold) I thought it would be fun to start a new tradition. The Parker Polar Plunge. All of the adult children decided they were in, so we went in to get changed. We were waiting and waiting for Pete to come out when all of a sudden, something came streaking out of the house running and jumped into the freezing pool! Pictures revealed that it was Pete. In a bikini. I Texas flag bikini. Oh my. We have not laughed that hard in a long, long time.

Mat and Kara's gift to their kids was a ski trip, so Mat made a video of old ski trip pictures and played it for them Christmas morning to tell them that was their present. Pretty neat.

building rockets!

The Christmas puzzle. 3D!

Chaw Bread! Christmas Eve Dinner

As usual, we got money from Pops and Nana. This year they had us make a pitcher of hot chocolate and go around the neighborhood to various houses, sing a song, offer the drink and then we would receive a hint to where our money was hidden. It made getting the money so much fun! Thanks Pops :)

Pops got a new poker table for his man cave.

The story behind the bikini.

Pops and Nana will leave for a trip to Costa Rica in a month so we decided to get Nana a gift card to buy a new swim suit. We thought it would be funny to wrap the gift card in a swim suit and found this one. The Texas flag bikini. I will never look at it the same again :)