The Hodges/Garcia Christmas

I, like most people, love Christmas. Who doesn't love spending time with family, eating lots of good food, getting some time off work, decorating your house with lots of red and green, and driving around looking at Christmas lights? This year for Christmas my whole family was able to get together for a few days at my parent's house. We had lots of fun hanging out, seeing family, and just relaxing. One thing my mom always does is decorate the house for Christmas. Here are some of her decorations.

These are my baby shoes on her tree. She also has a pair of Stan's and Abe's baby shoes.

When I was little my mom made everything special and over the top. We had a wreath that had huge jingle bells on it that would hang on the back door. Any time you touched the wreath (or even the door for that matter) you would hear the bells. Some, how every Christmas Eve, Santa would come to the house to make sure we were being good and would take the bells and hide them somewhere around our house. Who ever found them the next day would win a prize (candy). When I was really little I loved this. When I got a little older this terrified me. I never let on that I was scared but inside I would cringe with I saw the wreath gone. You might be asking yourself why I was so scared. Well, wouldn't you be terrified that Santa could come into your house without anyone seeing him in the middle of the day. By the 4th grade I grew out of the scared stage, just in time to find out the truth about Santa. I have to give my mom credit for coming up with wonderful ideas for making every holiday special and memorable .

But back to this Christmas: We all spent most of our time in the kitchen. Stan, the chef in our family, made four wonderful meals. When I say four, I mean he made two dishes with shrimp and made me and Lindsay our own meals since we don't eat shrimp. Not only did he make four meals but everything was from scratch. I hope one day I can cook as good as Stan.

While Stan and Justin slaved over dinner we made sugar cookies. Well, Lindsay made them and I just helped to decorate them. We had so much fun and the cookies were delicious.



For as long as I can remember our family has had a contest to see who could be the first person to say "Christmas Eve gift" to my Mom on Christmas Eve. If you happened to be the first to say it to mom, you got the Christmas Eve gift. This year I won!!!! It has been a long time since I have won. Needless to say I was very happy. I set my alarm for 12:00 but thought my mom would not like it if I woke her up. So I waited until 6:30. The best part of winning is when your brother or dad thinks he beat you to it and you are able to hold up to gift and say "I already won!!"

While driving to my grandparents house on Christmas Eve we had to entertain Justin with bubbles.

This is my cousins sweet baby!!! He was so fun to play with and watch open gifts.

This year we went a less traditional route with our Christmas dinner and had steak and chicken. Again, this was another meal that Stan with the help us Justin made. It was wonderful!!!!


Christmas morning was fun, like always!!! We all still get excited to see what Santa has brought us. This year I was the first one up and ran around the house waking everyone up. Since we have gotten older we no longer open our presents right away. Now we all drink some coffee, start making breakfast (monkey bread), and then divide up the gifts. Once breakfast is in the oven we all head into the living room and see what Santa has brought us. Here is some of the loot Justin and I got this year.



We had a great time with our family and are looking forward to celebrating Christmas next year with John Hayden, who is expected to make his appearance on January 23rd. For those who don't know my older bother and his wife are having a baby in less than 3 weeks!