Kids' Nativitiy set

My sister gave Makenzie this nativity set. It has a pop-up nativity and then 7 boxes for the child to open leading up to Christmas day that contain one piece to the nativity set. Along with each box, there is a poem to read.

Makenzie really enjoyed it and looked forward to it every day (actually she asked over and over and over again to do it every day). The poems were a little bit too advanced for her understanding right now, but she understood the gist of who everyone was. Plus, it is kid-friendly and she can handle the figures without me worrying that she'll destroy them since our other nativity set is off limits to her.

Christmas Day Festivities

Santa snuck in and ate cookies and left gifts right after midnight on Christmas. He didn't even have time to wrap any of the toys--he just left them there under the tree!
I have a really cute video of her as she walked down the stairs and discovered Santa had left her gifts, but I'm having issues getting it uploaded to You Tube, so here are some pictures for now. The first thing she told everyone when she talked about Christmas morning was "Santa ate my cookies!"



We had Christmas dinner with my old college roommate and her family. She and her husband have a little girl who is about 10 months younger than Makenzie and they wore themselves out playing so hard all day. Here's Makenzie all dolled up and ready to go (ignore the dorky grin).

And here's a couple pictures of the girls playing together.

Christmas Eve

We took time Christmas Eve to make cookies for Santa...
...and also to go to Santa's Wonderland and see the lights. Makenzie absolutely LOVED it--everything was so awe-inspiring to her. It was definitely worth the $22.50!

Miss Attitude

This is just a random picture of Makenzie in one of the outfits she got from family. She looks like she has such an attitude doesn't she? Lord help me when she's a teenager!

Christmas Part I - Granny's House

My (Angela's) sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew came in for a couple of days to have Christmas at Granny's house on the the 20th before they all packed up and headed back for Granny and Nanny to celebrate with them in Midland.

Makenzie was very overwhelmed by all the presents, and boy did she load up! Clothes, books, dolls, shoes, baby doll accessories, a laptop, lotion, a Dora pillow...wow!

Baby stuff!

A laptop!

She also really enjoyed being pampered and spoiled by my 12 year old niece.
Nanny also did some spoiling--Makenzie wouldn't eat dinner so Nanny made eggs and sausage just for her.

Christmas Baking at Granny's House

Still going on about the snow...

If you're not a Texan, you just don't get the excitement associated with snow that lasts past 10am. When we got off work this evening, it was snowing AGAIN, this time harder and bigger flakes! So we got home and of course had to take some pictures of Makenzie playing in it cause Lord knows it won't do this for like another 10 years or something.

For posterity...

...I have to mention that we awoke this morning to S-N-O-W in Texas! As usual, we were in a hurry to get out the door, so I did not get pictures, but it's true--we got some of the white stuff! Granted, it was just a light dusting and it won't accumulate, oh and it will be in the 70's by the weekend (no, seriously), but snow is snow people.

It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas!

We finally made time this weekend to get started on our Christmas decorations. Last year we cut our own tree from a local grower's farm and decided to go back there again this year. Our tree of choice is the Leyland Cypress since it doesn't shed much and doesn't stink up the house (Tim and Makenzie have some allergy issues).

So we made the short trek out to Wheelock and our very own lumberjack gathered his tools and off we went to find the perfect tree.
We knew we needed about an 8 footer and it didn't take us long to spy the winner. We at the Ramsey household are very picky about our Christmas trees so it was quite impressive that we agreed on "the one" in less than 10 minutes.
So our lumberjack Daddy went to work chopping down sawing down our tree while Kenzie and I provided moral support and picture taking skills.
In the blink of an eye After a short while, the tree was free from its lifeline to the earth and ready to adorn our living room. We came prepared this time with bungee cords and rope to secure it to the Durango for the short ride home, and being the rednecks that we are, we kept a good eye on it through the sunroof!Makenzie and I went to work decorating the tree while Daddy worked on the outside lights. Here's the finished tree:And the finished outside:Our roofline is so high that we're kind of limited to what we do outside. Okay, we could do more outside but it would require Tim either climbing a really tall ladder or hanging from sky hooks, and neither of those is probably a good idea for a man of Tim's, ahem...size stature.

Oh, and lastly...the stockings hung by the chimney with care:

Art gallery for November