holiday magic

With Lee in Afghanistan and hearing THIS news, I must say I conquered a wave emotions during the Christmas holiday. However, so many good cherishable memories did happen and for that I am truly grateful.

Gunner's sweet momma and my cousin surprised me by dressing Gunner in this precious shirt on Christmas Eve. His momma was holding him when I went up to give him kisses hello. I tugged at his shirt and read it outloud nonchalantly and immediately ugly cried on the spot. It was just the cutest thing and such a sweet moment. Gosh. Makes me tear up just thinking about it!

The Saturday before Christmas is ALWAYS a fun day with my momma and Grandma. We go to lunch and then stop by our favorite shops we like to frequent when I'm in town. Before heading back to my parent's house, we stopped by the pet store to get the dogs some Christmas treats and some of our own at a nearby yogurt place that's new in town that I hadn't tried yet. (We're a crazy family that loves ice cream all year round...even in the coldest of months.)

During the day we took all of our gifts to my aunt and uncle's house where all 17 of us spend the night Christmas Eve after a party at my parent's home that evening. We stopped and got everyone's stockings at my Grandma's house where they are stored beforehand. Mom said Grandma cried when she saw Lee's monogrammed stocking. I did too.

But a good cure all is Grandma's Sweet Tea. Man, that's the good stuff. I've starting drinking 1/2 sweet and 1/2 unsweet just like my dad.

And this is random, but don't we have a great Santa in our mall? He's so personable too. He was leaving the mall behind me one day when a mother and her small boy were walking out too. I could tell the mother was in a hurry but the small boy had his eye's glued on Santa. Santa told the boy he liked his blue tennis shoes and after that the mother's whole demeanor relaxed. It was like she was brought back to Earth from her preoccupied self. They all held hands as they walked down the sidewalk with the boy in the middle. Santa explained that it was time for him to get back to the North Pole for the night and he was waiting for the reindeer to fly his sleigh around the building. He bid them farewell and thanked the little boy for being good all year round. You should have seen that small boy's smile. It was contagious. It was the sweetest, biggest smile ever. The mom's smile was too. Here's our Santa with a baby of a friend of mine.