Christmas and New Year's

This year we had Christmas with the Stringer's and we had a great time.  For about 30 seconds we considered just staying home because we were so tired from all the travel but I knew if we just powered through we would be glad we did.  On the Monday before Christmas we were in Chappell Hill, then on Wednesday we were in College Station for the funeral.  We drove down to Corpus for the memorial service Wed. night and drove back to Bulverde Thursday night afterwards.  Fri. morning we had our own little Christmas, then Kyle worked one day while I hurriedly washed and repacked and loaded the truck.  Then we stuffed our family into the truck, not the comfortable minivan, and traveled 7 hours to Winnsboro (it should take 6, but not with kids).  We arrived at 2:30 a.m.  Whew!  Needless to say, I took a couple of naps while I was there.  Christmas Eve held the annual Henson (Kyle's mom's family) Christmas party, which was as entertaining as ever.  This year was a redneck theme:

And no, she's not really pregnant.  Pretty realistic for a towel, though!

Cullen had such fun with his cousin, Chaney.

And Jitterbug was a huge hit, of course!!  He's the reason we took the truck!  He rode in the back in a hog pen.  We might have gotten some funny looks.

New boots and toy guns.  Happiness.  It was a great trip, even if it took us 10 hours to get home because of traffic.  It's always worth it to see family.

For New Year's we had a big college party planned, but for one reason or another, everyone cancelled except the Porter's, some of our dearest and oldest friends.  The best man in our wedding.  I think it was just what we needed.  We had a blast, caught up, and just talked and talked.  I never even bothered to take a single picture, which is a shame, the kids had a blast together.  We did find a cool snake, a patch nosed snake.  He looked like a fat striped garter snake with a cool nose.

The kids all took turns holding him, and since Amy was taking a nap, we decided the snake could help wake her up: