life with the "dough-mac's": oh wow!

Merry Christmas friends! And a Happy New Year!

We had a great Christmas this year! Thanks to all of our family and friends who made it wonderful. We started our Christmas on Dec. 17th when we had the Reynolds Family Christmas Party. We decided during Thanksgiving to not exchange gifts this year and to "adopt" a few kids to buy gifts for. It was awesome and I hope we continue to do that. We played a game-boys verses girls. Boys won! I made some chocolate chip cookies and the recipe is from my great grandma! It was so fun to make a family recipe for others to eat. My grandma really enjoyed them and she asked all of my mom's sisters if they remembered them. That was really fun for me!

On Dec. 22nd, Guy and I went on a Christmas date. We try to do that every year-we've seen Phantom of the Opera, The Christmas Carol, Benjamin Button at the De Lux theater, and this year we went to dinner at Brio and saw Disney's Christmas Carol at Newport. It was so much fun and dinner was delicious. We had a coupon and free movie tickets so the night was pretty inexpensive for us. We were also celebrating Guy completing his first semester! Yeah! I don't want to brag, but he made the dean's list! woo-hoo!

The next night, we went to Montgomery Inn Boathouse for our bible study dinner! That was awesome! All the girls dressed "fancy" and we enjoyed spending time together. That is also a tradition that we started a few years ago. We missed Ben and Maria though-but not that much because they were in Hawaii with their family! Whatever!

Then on Thursday, Christmas Eve, we spent all day with Guy's family! We played Monopoly and Guy destroyed all of us. Why can't monopoly money be real money??? We had a great time visiting, snacking, and opening gifts. Braylen's two favorite gifts of the night: a wagon and a wooden train set! He loves trains right now. He says "choo choo" and pulls his arm up and down like he's pulling the whistle. He's adorable. After the Christmas Eve service, a few people came back to our house for a Christmas Eve breakfast party! We served breakfast casserole, pastries, biscuits, juice and coffee. This is also a tradition that we've done since my high school days (yes over 10 years ago!!). We used to go to the Waffle House but we outgrew it and have been meeting in different homes ever since. So fun!

Christmas morning we woke up around 8:30am (thanks to Braylen for sleeping in!) and went right to opening gifts! We surprised Braylen with another little train set that goes around a small plastic track when you press the conductor. He loves it! Each time he opened a gift he would say "oh wow!" It was so cute. He had a great time opening gifts. We skipped one tradition: we usually eat cinnamon rolls for breakfast but since we were so full from all of the delicious food we've been eating, we opted out of breakfast. That afternoon we went to my parents house and ate some more food! Mom fixed a ton of snacks and it was awesome! Once Braylen woke up from his nap, we played Wii (yes, Braylen did too!), ate our turkey dinner, then opened more gifts. We are so blessed! Braylen got an awesome table and chairs for our house and I got a sweet Vera Bradley overnight bag. Can't wait to use it when we visit Jess and Vince in Charlotte!

The next night, we went to my grandparents house for the Hicks Family Christmas. There are now 19 of us so we no longer have sleep overs but we have such a great time getting together. Grandma fixed turkey in a box (my fav) and I made oatmeal cookies for the fam-which is my grandma's recipe. Braylen stayed up until 11pm that night! He is so flexible. He had too much sugar I think. He kept sneaking M&M's all night. oh well. It's the holidays!

Needless to say we had an awesome Christmas! We hope you all experienced the Love of Jesus this year and all year around! Thanks for reading! I'll be posting our family New Years goals soon so that everyone can hold us accountable. Here are a few pictures!

Here is Braylen playing Wii