Tinney Christmas

After celebrating Christmas morning at our house we headed up to Chattanooga to join in the festivities up there. The kids were excited to get to see their cousins (and Charlie's first Christmas) as well as show off their new stuff to their aunts and uncles. All of us pitched in and got Lolli and iPad this year. The box had arrived at our house weeks before and the kids were SO excited to finally get to give her the present. Secretly I think they thought she'd let them play games on it all the time- haha!!! This year seemed to be the year of homemade gifts. The kids each got a "pillow pad" from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bo and they enjoyed getting to hang out on it in their new Tee-Pee Aunt Crickett and Uncle Adam gave them. Catherine got a new "girly" guitar from Lolli and Pop and you can see her new hippy style as she relaxes and just plays some music. Harbin (not pictured) was too busy being an elf and handing out all the presents for me to even catch a picture of him opening his. He takes being the oldest cousin very seriously and did a great job making sure all the presents went to their intended recipients. We did Christmas at Ma and Da's house on the 26th and boy you can tell the family is getting big. I believe the presents were almost overfilling the family room! Probably the funniest thing of the evening to me was Ella opening her clothes. Each year Ma gets the girls matching outfits and we all know it's really more a present for mom. However, this year, Ella was SO excited about her new clothes she just put them on (and insisted to do it herself) and wore her new shirt over her Christmas dress for the entire evening. It was just cute to see how excited she was about new clothes- I guess as a third girl, you just don't get a lot of "new" stuff. Christmas was awesome this year. Don't get me wrong, I love babies and I cherish the moments when my little ones were really little ones, but this year was so fun. The kids had such a heart of giving and it was awesome to see them more excited about picking out presents for each other, wrapping presents for aunts and uncles, and giving presents to grandparents than about opening their own. They all took the time to enjoy each gift and I really just think this was a wonderful phase with all of them during a great Christmas season. The mom.