Christmas Eve...and Christmas Eve Eve

We started our Christmas festitivies on Christmas Eve Eve with John Wayne's family. We had breakfast with his immediate family on Friday morning at his brother and sister-in-law's house.

Do you think that John Wayne and his brothers and Dad might look a little bit alike?

The Little Lady had five cousins there and had an absolute ball playing with them.


We wanted to get a picture of the girls and my child turned into a total punk. Do me a favor, if you're ever around my kid, don't make the comment "wow, she hasn't taken her hairbow off yet" because that's a sure fire way to remind her that she does in fact have something on her head...that she needs to take off.


From there, we headed into the big city for dinner at John Wayne's Grandma's house. Total picture failure on my part. All I got were these of the Little Lady jumping rope. Again, lots of cousins equals lots of fun for the Little Lady!


Christmas Eve was actually a really laid back day, which is unusal for us. Usually the day I just told you about happens on Christmas Eve, but this year due to some scheduling conflicts we did it Christmas Eve Eve. Anyway, we slept in a little and then enjoyed some really yummy red velvet pancakes with cream cheese frosting for breakfast.

The Little Lady then had fun playing with some of her new toys. Don't you love the whole 80's workout girl look she put together. She got these bangles from her cousins and LOVES them...not sure where/how she snatched one of my exercise headbands, but put it all together and you get one fabulous look!


We spent the afternoon at my Mom and Dad's eating green chili and watching the Bronco's game. I made green chili for Christmas Eve last year too, so I'm going to call it a tradition : )

That night, we all went to the Christmas Eve service.


The Little Lady was dying to open a present. This was the first she had seen of them, as both me and my Mom didn't put them out under the tree ahead of Christmas this year because we knew she could not be trusted...and we were right.


These are probably a couple of my favorite pictures out of the 400+ that I took over Christmas. She snatched her Daddy's good hat {a no-no...you don't mess with a cowboy's hat} but when you're so darn cute, you get away with it!


That wraps up most of our official Christmas gatherings. We have one more this Saturday with some of my Mom's extended family, but they're all coming to the ranch, yay!