Christmas in Russellville

We had a wonderful visit to Russellville to spend Christmas with the Browns and Spacks.  Elizabeth did great on the long car ride from Atlanta, mostly thanks to the DVD player and a lot of fruit snacks.  We opened gifts from family on Christmas Eve and had a huge dinner that evening.  On Christmas morning, all of the kids were excited to see what Santa had brought for them.  Santa brought Elizabeth a cookie baking set, Play-Doh, and several other toys, but her favorite thing that she received was a lollipop.  Of course.

On Christmas afternoon, we visited the Nicholsons and the Streetts.  Elizabeth loved checking out Gracie Streett's new toys and especially liked her pink grand piano.

Jack and Elizabeth

Opening gifts

Papa Charlie and Elizabeth

So excited about this gift!

Christmas Eve dinner with Joe

Play-Doh!

Opening gifts with Dad

Cookie set

What else is in here?

With her two favorite gifts: cookie set and lollipop

Gracie's playhouse

Gracie's new piano.  Gracie has some cool toys!

Merry Christmas - Part 1

Today was Christmas morning #1 for Elizabeth.  As has become our tradition, we opened gifts from Mom and Dad, Grammy and Grandpa, Uncle Peter and the Pages this morning since we will be traveling to Arkansas for Christmas next weekend.  Elizabeth had so much fun opening presents and playing with all of her new toys.  She is one very lucky little girl!

Presents under the tree.

This stroller holds lots of things!

Baby gets her bottle.

More gifts!

I think she likes her baby doll.

Advanced unwrapping technique.

Checking out the art easel.

Taking baby doll for a walk.

Elizabeth is a big fan of her Elmo Happy Holidays DVD and a Charlie Brown Christmas, each of which as been watched upwards of 20 times in our house.  At the end of Elmo, all of the Sesame Street characters sing Jingle Bells.  This two minute sing-a-long is the highlight of Elizabeth's day.  Here she is dancing along to Jingle Bells.

Garden Lights Holiday Nights

Christmas is in the air, even in the South.  Last night, we bundled up and headed out to the Botanical Gardens to see the Garden Lights Holiday Nights exhibit.  The trees were filled with colorful lights and they had set up special exhibits all throughout the garden.  Elizabeth particularly enjoyed the lawn near the conservatory, where Christmas music was playing loudly over the speakers.  Girlfriend got her dance on to some "Jingle Bells"!  We could have spent hours walking around, but Elizabeth was a little overstimulated and ran around like a crazy person.  It was dark, crowded and not easy to keep her with us, so we had a quick visit.  It was a fun holiday activity and we hope to see it again next year.

These photos are a mix of flash and no flash, and I have learned that I do not know how to take good nightime photos without a flash.  Must sign up for more photography lessons!

Lights in the trees

Not the best shot, but still thankful to the nice man who offered to take a family photo for us.

Colorful display on the lawn.

Taking it all in.

Flowers.

Full moon over the Gardens.

Watching the fountain.

Tigers... and the Zoo!

The big event from this weekend was the SEC Championship game.  We don't get to many football games these days, so we love it when LSU plays at the Georgia Dome.  Thanks to Uncle Mike, we had fantastic seats on the 40 yard-line in the LSU section.  The first half was a little painful to watch (zero LSU first downs - what??), but the Honey Badger made the second half very exciting.  Reagan and Shannon came in from Charlotte to go to the game with us and we also met up with Walt and Ally.

Geaux Tigers!  We loved the "Beat Everyone" buttons.

Our seats were awesome.  Thanks, Uncle Mike!

On Sunday, we had a family outing to the zoo.  Elizabeth is getting pretty good at navigating around to her favorite exhibits.  The best part, of course, is the train and carousel at the end. 

We start out at the flamingo exhibit.

Dad, check out that elephant!

Silly girl.

Waiting for the train to go.

Genetically pre-programmed to choose the Tiger on the carousel.