Christmas 2011: The Day

Just like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day was perfection. I absolutely loved the excitement that was oozing out of my kids. Do you remember that magical feeling you got as a child on Christmas morning. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of Christmas morning and I hope my kids are making some of their own favorite Christmas morning memories as well.

Much to my surprise I was the first one up on Christmas morning around 7:00. I waited as patiently as I could, but by 7:45 I was itching to get the festivities started. Our first priority on Christmas morning was Bryce's treatments. After a 30 minute beat box session and a breathing treatment we were ready to roll. I quickly want to give my girls a shout out here...they are always so patient and supportive of Bryce's needs. Never do they complain about having to wait for him to do do his treatments and typically they sit on the floor and share their blankets with him while he does his thing. Proud of how sweet my girls are and how much they love their brother. After treatments we brushed hair and brushed teeth our day got started.

I took an obnoxious amount of photos as usual. Instead of uploading a few I made a slide show.

Our day started with seeing what Santa brought, followed by a breakfast of Entenmann's donuts. This is a tradition I carried over to my family from when I was a kid. It's not Christmas morning until I have sunk my teeth into a delicious chocolate Entenmann's donut! After breakfast we opened up family gifts from under the tree. By the time we finished opening gifts and had ourselves a marshmallow gun fight it was time to get ready to head to my Aunt Carole's house for a yummy lunch. From Aunt Carole's we headed over to Bryan's parents house for dinner and gifts. Papa and Honey made a yummy dinner as well, but I was so incredibly full from lunch I didn't eat anything. I just couldn't fit anything else in my stomach!!

Christmas 2011 was just about perfect. Nothing better than celebrating the birth of our Savior with the ones you love most...our families. We are so blessed to be surrounded on all sides by amazing family. I love each and everyone of them...probably more than they really know.

Click the play button to enjoy the slide show.

Chrismtas 2011: The Eve

Christmas has come and gone...in a flash of course. I'm going to put this Christmas down as one of my favorite yet. Everything was perfect and I couldn't have asked for the festivities to be any better.

We kicked off the birthday of our Savior on Christmas Eve by heading to a live nativity. We went to this nativity last year and loved it so we wanted to visit again this year. There are lots of animals to see so the kids love it. Jordyn was really into brushing each and every one of animals. My mom had to pry the brush from her so other kids could have a turn.

Sydney was into feeding the animals handfuls of grass and she also liked sweet talking the animals.

Bryce was a little stand-offish with some of the animals, but LOVED the rooster. He wanted to spend most of his time chatting the feathery guy up. At one point we walked past the manger and I said to Bryce, "Look, there's baby Jesus". He looked around confused and said, "Where's Mary?" as she wasn't standing right next to the manger. He ended up spotting her across the way talking to a group of people and was so excited to see her.

After the nativity we headed home for dinner. My mom, dad and brothers always join us on Christmas Eve for dinner. We joke and say our house is "neutral territory". Every year we have breakfast for dinner...it's our little tradition and I love it.

Everything on Christmas Eve was perfect. I had the best time hanging out with my family. Everyone was in good spirits and we ended up having a lovely little evening. I think my favorite part of the night was taking photos. Usually this turns out to be a drag, but everyone was in such a silly mood it made for some really fun pictures.

This is just one of several pictures my mom took of me trying to annoy Joey (a favorite past time of mine) while he was deep in conversation with Bryan. After about 5 of these photos he finally realized what was going on and ended up snapping at me which is basically what I was going for. Brother and sister aggravation never gets old...no matter what our ages are!

Dad is sporting some new facial hair or as Bryce says, "Pop has grass on his face". In all of my 36 years I have never seen my dad with a beard so I'm still trying to get used to it.

A watch snap-bracelet...SWEET! Thanks Pop!

This is a really great pictures of my mommy.

Sydney was more than thrilled to get a new robe.
The one she has been sporting is about 3 sizes too small for her.
Thanks Uncle Jay!

Uncle Jay's personal shopper got this at Learning Express. It's called: "My Little Sandbox" and it's a fabulous toy. I highly recommend it...they have boy and girl themed boxes.
This will be coming with us on clinic days for sure.

Joey got Bryan a new pair of Oakleys...very cool.
You can never have too many pairs of nice sunglasses.

The kids loves their crazy uncles.

What up yo?!

Nerd.

This string of pictures is hilarious.
I didn't post all of them because there are too many, but they are all pretty funny.

You know it's a fun time when Joey is even participating.

Great family photo.

This picture cracks me up...check out Joey's face.
See people, he really can be fun.

Silly Shot!
I wonder where Jay and I get the whole open your mouth wide in ever picture??
Hmm....

My favorite baby brothers.

A family photo WITH Boss!! It's a Christmas miracle!!

Me and mom.

Me and my daddy.

More from Christmas 2011 to come...stay tuned.

Get Your Walk On

Who's ready for the 2012 Great Strides walk in Atlanta?

Team Bryce Bryce Baby...that's who!

I officially registered our team for our 4th year of participation. I hope many of our friends and family will join us in this fantastic fundraising event. Last year our team raised over $10,000 and the Atlanta walk raised over 1 million dollars. We must continue the momentum and do again in 2012 so we can get more drugs like Kalydeco into the hands of CF patients. The CF community as a whole has made "Great Strides" over the past several years in developing some pretty amazing drugs that will change the lives of patients with CF.

If you would like to donate to our team, join our team or do both please click the following link and follow the directions.

http://www.cff.org/great_strides/BryanAndJenniferJones

Got questions?
Feel free to contact me and I'll answer whatever I can for you. If any of our friends who don't live in Georgia want to host a Team Bryce Bryce Baby in their own state let me know and we can find a walk near you.

We participate in the walk and ask for donations because of this guy right here. We do it all for him...and for all our little CF friends:
Madeline, Rad, Gavin, Ben, Sophie, Bryce and Peter
just to name a few!

"B" is for Busy.

If you look up the work busy in the dictionary you might find a picture of this crew right here.

I know I must sound like a broken record since I mention being busy in almost every blog I write, but I seriously...I preach the truth. The past 3 months have been insanely busy for our little family, but this morning I woke up to find myself in unfamiliar territory. I woke up and did not have ONE thing that had to be accomplished today.

Are you kidding me?

Heaven I tell you.

The girls have been busy all morning working on their new crafty gifts they got from cousin Lexi and Bryce has been walking around the house dressed as a cowboy/pirate/rock star race car obsessed little boy. It has been so refreshing and relaxing. I'm thinking we need WAY more days like this!

Since I haven't had much time to update the old blog I figured I would post pictures of some of the "goings on" around our house.

First up...

Buddy.
Our Elf on the Shelf has been rather entertaining this year. Yes, our elf has gotten into some mischief, but by no means it is every night nor is it very elaborate. Some nights he just does the boring old hide in random spots and other nights he has gotten into a tiny amount of mischief. Either way the kids really enjoy the whole elf concept so we embrace it. Hopefully the mom who writes this blog (click here) won't throw me into the "over achieving Elf on the Shelf mommies" group. ;) If you haven't read this particular post on the blog titled "People I want to Punch in the Throat", you must because it's a good laugh. Several of her blog post are extremely funny...I dig her style. :)






*Notice that Raja is in the back seat...chaperoning Jasmine's date with Buddy of course.

Buddy also stacked marshmallows into towers and hung off the foyer balcony like mistletoe with a sign that said "Kiss", but I forgot to take pictures.

****
We made Christmas cookies and decorated them. This was such a hit with the girls that I've bought more supplies so we can make more cookies this week. I'm VERY good at coming up with excuses to make delicious goodies!

Uncle Andy helped too.

Beautiful AND delicious!

*****
The Mullinax family came over for dinner one night. The kids exchanged gifts and were thrilled with their new treasures.

*****
Sydney's school holiday performance. Total unorganized chaos (on the schools part), but my girl gave it her all! She was so excited for us to watch her sing.

*****
This past Sunday was a big day. We had not one, but two family Christmas parties to attend. After church we headed to my mom's to hang with her side of the family. Pictured below. From there we headed to Bryan's parents house to celebrate with his entire side of the family. Of course I forgot to take pictures, but just know they are an equally good looking group. ;)

*****
These are just some of the fun activities we have been up to. Tomorrow Bryce has a Christmas performance at his preschool. He will be one of the "Heavenly Host of Angles". It will be a miracle if he can sit still through the short program. Hopefully I'll get some cute pictures and maybe even a video.