Hill Family Christmas 2012

I was not sure how to divide these posts for our trip. If I really wanted to take lots of time, I would do each event individually - like a post about decorating gingerbread houses, a post about girls night out, a post about being back at the gym. My super blog friend M, she would do that. She is good at it. She is patient. I, on the other hand, am tired. I kind of just want to update the blog on the trip in general. Then I want to go back and mentally process the trip, and I imagine I will be doing that for quite some time. So, for now, I am dividing the blog posts about the big trip into one post about most of the individual trips within the big trip, and then individual family Christmas posts. Because let's face it, Christmas is fun and there are always lots of pictures, and Christmas with little kids is really fun. We had our Hill Family Christmas on Saturday December 15th. My brother and sister along with their families came to Lexington for the day. My mom had the great idea of getting a photographer to come in and take a family portrait since all of us were there. Sadly my kids did not cooperate as much as I would have liked for them to, but we still got some good photos nonetheless. I think the last time we did this was at our wedding 7 years ago, so we were long overdue for a family photo. After the photos, we ate, watched UK basketball, naturally, and when the K Man woke up, opened presents. For Miss M, the highlight, was walking my sister's dog. She loved that dog and kept asking why it slept so much. Well, it "slept" so much because we were not too sure how she would do with little hands trying to pet her all the time or grab her tail (K Man), but when she did wake up from those long naps in the basement, Miss M and the K Man, were in dog heaven. They loved her. I was able to have some quality conversations with my siblings while the kids were entertained with cousins. They loved playing chase with their cousins and Miss M enjoyed it when her older cousins would fix the hair on the My Little Ponies (Miss M played with all of my old toys - Fisher price dolls, my little ponies and strawberry shortcakes...so fun for me to watch. I am so glad my mom kept all of that!). Miss M also

got to decorate her second gingerbread house with cousins which was fun, although we joked that 16 and 13 year olds are not as patient when putting together gingerbread houses as mamas. On Sunday the 16th, my dad fixed us his signature prime rib and the kids got to open presents from Grandma and Papaw. Miss M loved her Minnie Mouse guitar and wants to play just like daddy does on his guitar. She also got some fun dollhouse furniture - a washer and dishwasher along with a piano. When you look at the pictures, check out the pink and purple Christmas tree in the backyard...you can guess who asked for and decorated that. What a fun Hill family Christmas. Thank you mom and dad for being such generous hosts and letting us take over your house for nearly 3 weeks. We had a great time making such fabulous memories with you. We love you.