"Santy Hogs" came to our house!

Yes Santy Hogs (as Danielle says it) came to our house this year. Danielle and Alyssa were both such good girls this year. Granny and Papaw were up to see the girls get their gifts too. Danielle has been asking for this little "house kitchen" for Alyssa since early June. So whenever anybody asks he what she wanted for Christmas, she only asked for that. She was so happy when Alyssa received it from Santy. It really made the day even more special. After gifts we open and put toys together all day. We ate more tamales for breakfast and always a treat my mom's coffee cake. We finished the day off with a warm bowl of granny's homemade chicken and dumplings and a quick visit to see the Vares and Seffens family for gifts and dessert.

Thank you everybody for all the amazing gifts but mostly for all your love and friendships with out it we'd be incomplete. Lyle and I realize our children will always be our biggest blessing and our deepest love, Christmas is such a magical time of year. We look forward to 2009!

Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve started off amazing. We woke up at granny's house, had breakfast and open up gifts. Granny's sure did spoil her little girls. We love waking up at Granny's. We next went to Papaw's house where he fixed his first Christmas dinner. He even made lemon meringue pie. YUM! The girls played with all their cousins and had so much fun. We open up gifts and again everybody was spoiled rotten. We next traveled to Grandma and Grandpa "Tortilla's" house. The amazing smell of fresh steamed tamales is something we look forward to every Christmas. The house is always packed beyond belief but that what makes it special. This year my family made 100lbs of tamales!! You can never make too many.

Grandma's Sugar Cookies.

This year Betty is in Georgia taking care of our Mamaw. We miss her very much during the holidays and decided we needed to keep her tradition of her sugar cookies going. We all know it's not Christmas till me get our batch of cookies. Danielle helped me make the dough, cut out shapes and frost. What a mess we made but is was so much fun and they turned out so good. I think I ate my own body weight in cookies and still crave more. Alyssa had her first cookie too(she was in charge of quality control) and she ate 3 whole cookies. Your not a West till you have had your first sugar cookie! Yummy!

Snow Days.

Our first snow of 2008. This was not just any snow but the first snow fall for the season. We went to Greg and Shannon's cabin in Tahoe and had a great time. It was beautiful and boy was it cold. We mostly snuggled by the fire and watched the silver dollar sized snow flakes fall from the sky. The girls, (Shannon, Rhianna, and me) had a little ladies day outing...with no kids. We had lunch and pomegrante martini's! Some might say we had a few too many martini's but we just don't seem to think that's possible, we had just a small case of the giggles! After we "walked" home the boys took the ranger and went exploring through the mountains. They were frozen solid when they came back, but a warm meal and a warm fire fixed that. Jordan and Danielle had so much fun in the snow making snow angels and Chase and Alyssa kept warm in their jammies most of the time. Before we left we realized our truck had a flat so after we put on the spare we packed up and headed home. Traffic was horrible and it took 4 hours to get home! But we would do it again, we had a blast!

Turkey Day!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Granny's' house. Danielle and Alyssa had so much fun playing and eating. Alyssa even had her first taste of mashed potatoes. Dinner was fantastic it was a perfect day. Julie and the Kids, Travis and Papaw came to our house Saturday to have our own "thanksgiving day" and had a fantastic time. Jake, Jenna and Danielle all made beautiful Christmas ornaments and gingerbread men to send to Trevor in Afghanistan. We are thankful for so much this season.

Watch out world...

...HERE COMES ALYSSA!

It's official we have a crawler in the house. Alyssa turned 7 months old last month and is growing up way too fast. She is sitting up like big girl and starting to eat all kinds of foods, so far her favorite is vanilla wafers. It is definitely time to baby proof the house. Her biggest motivation for crawling is to attack and eat Danielle's crayons! Danielle keeps wondering why we wanted her to crawl at all. She told me "this is very bad mom." Ha