Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Christmas Part Three: Hoelzle Cousins

Mabry had so much fun being with all her cousins over the Christmas holidays. Our family is so blessed with such great little ones. Here are some pics of all the wee ones.......
All the Hoelzle cousins with Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Andrews!

Sweet Jacob (Scott & Michele's son)

Big boy Caden (Braden & Bethany's sweet baby boy)

Ella Grace (Scott & Michele's fun-loving little girl)
Aunt Rebekah with Mabry and Ella
Jacob and Conner (Todd & Jen's oldest son)

Carter, Cooper and Jacob

Carter and Cooper with Cookie-dog (Todd & Jen's youngest and middle child)

Aunt Rebekah reading to the sweet babies. It is so much fun for
Mabry to have cousins her own age! We can't wait to watch them grow up together.

We are so thankful to God for the many children He has blessed our lives with. They are truly a gift from God!

Christmas Part Two: Hoelzle Family.....Oh the games we will play!

We headed to Longview for our Hoelzle family Christmas a couple of days after Christmas and stayed until New Year's Day. We had a great time spending time with the whole fam as always. These pics aren't very good but they can give you a little taste of how our time was spent. It seems we have turned into quite the gaming family......

Run Bethany!!

Good old fashioned "Around the World" ping pong was a blast.....especially late at night while the kids were sleeping! Don't you love Scott's visor??!

And then there were the exciting games of late-night Catch Phrase!

Pappy gets a little worked up if you can't tell.........
and then we all get worked up because he is laughing so hard......
Just plain overcome with excitement!

We had our annual white elephant gift exchange. Lots of fun as usual with lots of great goodies!

Braden is being counseled by his loving wife to steal the "stock pot" from Mom so she can have it.............but, did he listen??
Nope! And what did he get........a great make-up bag! The lesson of this story....ALWAYS listen to your wife!!

Braden, Bethany, Andy and Hilliard spent LOTS of time playing this game. It's called "Settlers of Catan" and looks unbearably boring but they promise it is loads of fun!
Andy is up to something, as always.
The boys set out for many adventures of Frisbee Golf.
Sweet Jacob
Go Andy Go!
And, that's a wrap!


Stay tuned for more pics from the Hoelzle family Christmas since I know you haven't had enough yet!:)




Monday, January 28, 2008

Christmas: Part One

I know everybody is probably sick of hearing about Christmas by now so I will try and make this as painless as possible! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at our house with just the three of us and had a great time. We baked, decorated cookies and went to look at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve. The next morning Mabry opened her gifts from Santa along with her stocking. Around lunch time we headed over to Jason and Brielle's to celebrate Christmas with them and the Venables. We had such a great time being with family, exchanging gifts and had a WONDERFUL Christmas dinner. I am so sad to say that it seems we didn't get any pics of our time with the Gages and Venables on Christmas. I could have sworn we took pics....but they are no where to be found! You will have to trust me in saying we had a great time! Here are some pics of our Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning.......

Family pic on Christmas Eve (I hated to post this pic because I look horrible, but at least Andy and Mabry look cute. That's all that matters, right??:)


Here are the cookies we decorated and left for Santa. Of course, mine is the one that looks like an alien with chicken-pox! Andy, as always, showed me up and made his look extra cute. That is what life is like being married to an engineer.....he ALWAYS thinks things through before doing them and his projects usually end up spectacular, while mine.....well, you see the cookie.:( I think I redeemed myself a little on Mabry's cookie......better luck next year for me!

Mabry with her stocking on Christmas Morning


Mabry and her gifts from Santa

Mabry kissing her baby doll from Santa....so sweet!

Mabry LOVES her red wagon! She loves for Daddy to pull her around the house in it and likes to put her toys, laundry and anything else she can find in the wagon, too.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Christmas Season!



Okay, I have about 5,000 pictures I want to post from our Christmas holidays so I have decided to do multiple posts to get us all caught up! Here goes for the first one.......

These are some pics of the days leading up to Christmas and the excitement in our house! As I have said before.....Mabry loved the lights, presents, and decorations. She was so much fun this year and we know next year will be even better!


We took Mabry to the mall to see Santa but were too cheap to pay for a picture of her screaming in his lap. Since we weren't allowed to take pics with our own camera of her with Santa we went to the other side of the big Christmas tree and tried to get some cute pics of her for a possible Christmas card.........

No such luck! She was too busy looking at all the fun decorations to look at the camera.

We even tried putting her on the other "forbidden" side of the railing in direct contact with the decorations......but no....she still wouldn't cooperate.

While at the mall, Mabry spotted this 4-wheeler and decided this is just what she wanted for Christmas! And yes, she is once again on the "wrong" side of the chains. She and her Daddy are quite the rule-breakers!

Good ol' family fun on the couch

Mabry and the ottoman got into a tiff and Mabry received her first black eye about a week before Christmas.

You lookin' at me?

Stay tuned for more of this Christmas girl to come!