Christmas Weekend 2015!

This Christmas was nice.  It was relaxing, but we still had enough “events” to attend to make it fun.  On Tuesday, we met up with our Friends Paul and Amy along with their daughter Emma to check out the Christmas Train hosted at Victory Camp.  My old school HYPFer’s remember Victory Camp?!  Good times!

The Kids even got to sit on Santa’s lap!

Overall, it was a pretty impressive set up!  They lite up their entire camp and had a train drive through it sharing the story of Christmas… good stuff.  While we were there, I ran into some old school friends (Betsy, Jean, Jennie, Jamie and their fam).  Small world!  It was great to see them and catch up for a bit!

On Christmas eve, we decided to pick some oranges from our backyard… The weather was nice, so we wanted to be outside for a little bit.

 

Later that evening, I agreed to help my cousin Wes out with a Christmas Eve Candlelight service he was doing A/V work for.  It was at City Centre and was a pretty cool set up.

Although it was nice to help Wes out, I was exhausted!  We worked from 3pm till about 9:30pm.  Being on your feet all that time can get tiresome.

The next day (Friday – Christmas morning) we got up and opened up our gifts.

Then we headed to my parent’s house for breakfast.  The spread was great!  I tried to pace myself because we had lunch plans, but I couldn’t resist!

Then we opened up gifts there as well.

The kids really enjoyed it!  After breakfast we headed to Sam’s house (Sheena’s cousin) to enjoy Christmas Lunch with her side of the family.  There was a ton of food and it seemed that the desserts were never ending… Although we all stuffed our faces, these two didn’t seem to mind to get 5 or 6 rounds of dessert for themselves…

After eating, we played a few games and just hung out for a bit.

Layla begged us to spend the night, so we let her.  She loves spending time with her cousins Iris and Erin.  The next morning (Saturday), we headed back to their house to pick her up.  While there, the 3 of them put on a puppet show for us.

Then we headed to Janie’s apartment to hang for a bit.  The kids played and watched TV.

Then we headed home and Sheena took the kids for a quick stroll up and down the driveway.

My good friend Dudley is about to get hitched, so a few of us got together at Lucky Strike to just hang out and spend some time with Dudley.

After bowling, we headed to Kim Son for some grub.

It was great to just hang out with these guys.  Fun times.

The next morning (Sunday) we did our usual.  We went to church and headed to HEB afterwards… but this time was different.

We ran into Robin!  I run into people at HEB all the time, but Rob was the first to reference this blog and said “lets take a picture!  I’m on the blog!”  hahah… it was awesome!  Plus he’s cool, so I figure a pic with him would make me cooler.  After our shopping, we headed to Papa Murphy’s to grab a “take-n-bake” pizza.  We picked one up a Costco and it was awesome, so we figured we’d give this one a try.

Turns out, they got a good pizza too!

Christmas is always a nice time to spend with family and friends.  I love how the city basically shuts down on Christmas day and sorta forces you to be with the people you love rather than keeping busy with day-to-day life.

On a sadder note, our friend Tony Philip passed away after battling with cancer.  It was a horrible thing to hear, especially during the holiday season.  He was such a great person and had a young family as well.  Their family was so strong throughout the entire thing, but it was still a hard fact to soak in.  We also got word that our friend’s parents were hit by a tornado in Dallas.  There entire home was destroyed, but they made it out safe (not to mention her nephew was there as well).  These types of event that occur in life force me to reflect on what’s really important.  If you have people in your life that you love, make sure they know it!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!