Christmas Eve

Waiting for Santa to arrive
LaRocca Family Christmas Eve

Colten and Carmelo making a break for it!

C'mon Carmelo, let's go!

We have been blessed with some pretty amazing friends. Vincent and Kelli are two people that include our family in pretty much everything they do! We have bonded over kids, football, and life. They have two little boys that are Colten's age and they get along really well! They make us feel welcome and like part of the family. We probably spend every weekend with them and often get together during the week. We really don't know what we would do without this friendship. So, they invited us to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Dinner with them. We were pretty excited! Christmas is a really special time for me and my family. We love it!! It was really hard for me to be away from the family this year and being around friends really helped that.

So, Christmas Eve is when Santa arrives and passes out present at the LaRocca's house. We went outside and sang Christmas carols and waited for Santa to arrive. He comes in thru the front door and all the kids are so excited!! The presents giving commences and it was a mad house for a good couple of hours. It was great!!! We had a blast and Santa even found Colten there! Once again, so blessed to have the whole LaRocca family in our life!!

Kelli's Graduation Party

The Louisiana Group!

One of our best friends, Kelli (middle blond) graduated college this month. Her parents threw her a grad party at this house out on the water. It was a beautiful place and we had a lot of fun. It made a great backdrop for some pictures!

Feeding Rodney

Rodney the Reindeer needed some carrots!

Santa Clause

We tried to visit Santa 3 times!! The line was just way too long or Hunter had to get to work. When Colten finally saw him, he cried, screamed, and tried as hard as he could to get out of his lap!

Oh Christmas Tree!

With Hunter being sick, he just didn't feel well enough to get a tree and if we went and picked one out, I wanted it to be a family trip. My neighbor and I were talking about it and she offered to let us borrow one of theirs that they weren't using! Problem solved! Hunter sat on the couch while Colten and I decorated our tree and had a blast. Colten loved looking at all the different decorations. He also loved to hang them! We made it through with nothing broken and no tree toppling, had a couple of close calls though!

Christmas Lights

Colten loves Christmas lights and gets really excited when he sees them. He always says, "ohhh, pwetty" We usually put lights on both levels of our home and around the door. Well, Hunter was sick for a few weeks this December and we didn't get around to putting the lights on the house, so Colten helped me put some around the door. He was very excited to help adjust, plug in, and decorate with the lights. I can't believe what a little man he is becoming. I look at these pictures and he just looks so big to me!

My Helper

The finished product!

Snow in Louisiana

It snowed for the second year in a row in Louisiana. Colt was sleeping when it started coming down, so I woke him up to see it. He loved it! Good thing I did because it was gone by the morning!

Snow on the ground
Colten and I enjoying the snow

Birthday and Thanksgiving

Helping me to make lemon bars
Olive hand

Exhausted on my birthday!

Feeding the giraffe

I turned the big 26 last month! We decided to spend a family day of going to the zoo and just relaxing with our family. The zoo was one of the best experiences! Colten got to feed a giraffe!! It wrapped it's tongue around his arm and Colten had a blast. I didn't get to see the actual giraffe feeding as I had gone to the restroom, but the pictures are amazing! The look on Colten's face is priceless! It was really nice to just spend the time with the family and thank you to Hunter for always making me feel special, not just on my special day!

Now we have some pretty great friends down here. Vincent and Kelli. They have 2 kids right around Colten's age and the boys all play really well together. We have all become really pretty close and they always invite us to all of their family functions. It's nice to have a surrogate family when you are away from your own. So anyways, Kelli took me to see New Moon as my birthday present on the day before Thanksgiving. We were planning on spending the night and heading to Vincent's parents house for Thanksgiving. It was going to be such a fun day! Well, I ended up with the stomach flu that night and we ended up going home bright and early that morning. Hunter ended up being sick with a sore throat. Poor Colten was so bored that day and didn't even get a turkey dinner! Luckily Hunter decided to make Thanksgiving dinner a week later! Such a sweet guy!