Our adventure began in Knoxville on the Wednesday before we left when we had Christmas with Zach's dad and Janice. They are so understanding and don't pitch a fit about us always being away for holidays. We just celebrated a little early. We had a good dinner of homemade chicken tenders and yummy vegetables and then opened gifts with them. Zach was almost as excited about Jessica's new ipod as she was and they immediately had to test it out!
We left on Friday afternoon for Clarksville to have Christmas with mom and dad. We had dinner with them (roast and veggies since it's easy and no one new for sure what time we'd get there) and dad and Ben wrapped mom's presents. Mom usually doesn't have any presents under the tree until right before we open thanks to dad's busy holiday schedule and procrastination of wrapping presents. I was volunteered to read the Christmas story this year and after a brief time of reflection on the past year (not as sentimental as it may sound since the only thing we could remember was birthdays and anniversaries) we opened gifts. We like to go one at a time so that we can give proper attention to each gift. Which usually includes a picture with each gift leading to way to many pictures! Several years ago my mom started making up names for us to put on packages and who they were from. Names such as TN girl or Blue Raider or piano player or whatever creative thing she can think of at the time just to make it interesting. This is always a fun thing because she usually forgets who at least one of the presents was supposed to be for. A couple of fun memories from gift time...
* My favorite gift to give this year was picture desk calenders that I made for mom and dad entitled "The Year of the 50". Both of my parents turn the big 50 this year!!
* Zach got a golf caddy (it's a shelving thing for the garage to hold his golf stuff) twice! Mom wrapped up a note for him leading to where the present was and then he opened three used golf balls. Apparently she forgot about the golf balls and wrapped the note also.
* We tend to save the "big" gifts until the last present to open. This year mom's last present was a broomvac. She had mentioned that she wanted one, but it wasn't what she was expecting. She did a good job of trying to be excited and grateful but we could tell she was a little confused. We thought we were done with gifts and were beginning to clean up when dad came back in with a cute little bag and a very big grin on his face. It was a beautiful ring he'd picked out for mom and obviously found great joy in making her squirm a little!
Saturday morning we headed to Arkansas for Christmas with Zach's mom's family. We had a fun time visiting with Granny Helen and his aunts and uncles and cousins. The highlight of our time there is the Christmas Eve get-together with all the family. We all met at Aunt Judith's for dinner and music and little dancing, thanks to Melanie and Charley. His family is very musically talented and it's so much fun to hang out and listen to the musicians and sing-a-long. I love to watch Zach play along on the guitar as he's trying to keep up with everyone. He actually does a very good job!
Christmas morning I woke Zach up with our presents to each other. It was very hard to get him to wait to open presents with just the two of us... but I'm glad we did. It was a special time with just the two of us. After we got ready and loaded the car we headed to Granny Helen's to say Merry Christmas before heading to Memphis to meet up with my family.
We made it to Grandma Kay's apartment without much difficulty (we are thankful for cell phones and people who know their way around Memphis!). We visited, ate lunch, sang "12 Days of Christmas", opened presents, rearranged the car so Ben could ride with us and we were off to MS.
We got to MS just in time to wait a little longer for Christmas dinner to be ready, but it was worth it. Thanks to Mamaw and my aunts... we had a delicious dinner of turkey and dressing, yummy garden veggies, fruit salad, and of course various candies for desert. After a quick clean up we opened presents with my MS family. We left to come home on Thursday and got back late Thursday night.
It was a busy, travel-filled week. We wouldn't trade a minute of it.
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