The Roberts Family: December 23-24

As you might have read a couple of posts ago, our family's Christmas begins on the 23rd when we venture to the Humphrey house to celebrate with the Calverts (my Mom's family). This is a function with roughly 35 people attending... not exactly nirvana for a toddler, particularly for one whose nap was interrupted by a visit from the Euless Fire Department. (An aside: be sure your carbon monoxide detectors work properly. Sheesh.) Last year, Luke essentially screamed the whole time. It was ugly.

But this year? Well, this year, we arrived, I set Luke down, and he was walking all around. I tentatively thought, "Okay, this seems good. But I'm sure he'll have a breakdown soon enough." I thought I'd try to capture a picture of him when he was happy. And - for those of you with wiggle worm children, you know what a rarity this is - when I said, "Luke, stop and look at Mama," this happened:

Folks, that's a bona fide obedient smile. Whoa! What a Christmas miracle! He was just awesome the whole night- he had an awesome time with his six other little boy cousins: William (5), Brayden and Bryce (2.5), Wynn (19 months), and Jordan and Nathan (~9 months). Unfortunately, I couldn't get pictures of all of them - they're a tough group to get still!

Here are my cousins and significant others - this is almost all of Granny's grandchildren. Wow!

Mom got a Snuggie in our white elephant gift exchange. I just included this picture because whatever I'm doing in the background looks like a cheesy Olan Mills photo circa 1985.

Here's Nathan (a.k.a. Nate Dawg, or, my favorite of his aliases, Nater Tot). He is a hoot! His twin bro Jordan was very sleepy, but Nater Tot was ready to par-tay!

Here's sweet Wynn, whose mommy scored an Elmo and a Cookie Monster in the gift exchange. Niiiice.

Here are Luke and Wynn, who, as you can tell, brought the same paci. At one point, Luke, while sucking on his paci, took Wynn's and tried to put it in his mouth. = \ I hear Wynn returned the favor though. Oh boys...

We had a wonderful time. I'm so thankful for having my Calvert extended family so geographically close, and I'm thrilled that Luke has built-in buddies that are so much fun!

Next was Christmas Eve... which was SNOWY. Yes, in Dallas, we had SNOW! I'm still baffled at this (and baffled at how much of it still hasn't melted). Before we went to Honey and Grand's, we had to bundle Luke up. How awesome is his hat?

We kicked off our celebration by going to church for a moving Christmas Eve service. We left to find windy ferocious snow - it made for a hectic drive home, but once there, we kicked back and enjoyed great fun together and lots of wonderful gifts. Johnny and Jackie brought Buzz, their new dog. I think Buzz thought Luke was another puppy (not totally off, Buzz). He was quite into Luke, and vice versa. Here's my bossy boy putting Santa Buzz into his crate.

Later, after dinner and pre-presents, we got Luke in his jammies. Um, Buzz was not having those Elmo slippers. We had to take those off Luke pretty quick before Buzz got one of his feet!

As usual, I didn't take nearly as many pictures of the family as I would have liked, but it was fantastic to have the Featherstons with us, too. Luke particularly enjoyed chewing on and tossing Parker's K-State football around. (Thanks, Parker, for tolerating that.) Here he is with his Dad celebrating his Christmas score: