Christmas 2008

This Christmas was bittersweet since it was our first without my sweet grandmother, Mimi. Although, truthfully, every holiday has been difficult since Byron died 4 years ago.

We began Christmas morning gathered around PawPaw as he read the birth story of Jesus out of his Bible.

Then it was time to gather around the Christmas tree as PawPaw handed out the gifts.


Colin and Jenn

David
Colin and Jenn gave me a Longhorn doggie treat canister! Grayson
All my Aston cousins.

Every year since I was born as their first grandchild, Mimi and PawPaw started a Christmas Eve tradition of giving us Christmas pajamas and a brass ornament engraved with our names on it. Mimi would bring out her giant, brown "Santa bag" and pass out our special gifts. This year, PawPaw wanted to somehow continue that tradition for us. He brought out "Santa's bag" with a completely unexpected, but cute surprise! With my mom's help, they've slowly been going through things in the house. Remember the old Tupperware plastic cups??? I have clear memories drinking milk out of these cups when we were little at Mimi and PawPaw's house. Well, PawPaw pulled out these brightly colored cups out of his brown bag, and we all started cheering! We each picked a cup to take home with us! Good memories! Thanks PawPaw!

The Aston kids spent a lot of time collecting family Christmas pictures from over the years and compiling them in a book for PawPaw. What a great gift!

It's a little emotional to look through all those pictures. The time goes by so quickly, but those memories never fade. We miss Mimi and Byron so much.

Mimi made all 12 of her grandchildren's stockings! She was the greatest crafter in history! Despite the fact that we're all adults, Santa still fills our stockings! Byron's stocking holds a US and Marine Corps flag.

As we have been slowly going through all of Mimi's things, we have come across many things she made. One drawer held about a dozen old aprons she had sewn! Some of them were horrible, though I'm sure very fashionable once upon a time! But some of them were pretty cute and very retro - we kept these!

Grant and Uncle Randy particularly loved these handmade aprons with giant skillets on them. But who wouldn't?

Does Santa live at Petsmart?

Yes, once again I'm going to admit our embarassing obsession with our babies...ahem...dogs. Well, they're all we have, so they are our babies!!! We picked them up from the puppy hotel after our vacation and surprised them with Christmas goodies! Toys never last long in our house, but I believe Chloe set a new record in dismembering her little stuffed baby. Bella was more focused on the candy cane shaped rawhide bone.

Could Chloe's eyes get any bigger??? "Please mama, give me my treats!"

Check out the little pink dog's teeth...it's got this big stupid grin on it's face while it's being attacked!

The severed remains...

Richter Family Photos

Our good friends, Scott and Michelle, asked David to take some family photos of them and their 1-year old son, Jaxson, for their Christmas cards. It was a beautiful, brisk day as we headed out to a local park that has a neat old historical house on the property (which even has an American flag on the front porch!), as well as an awesome big, red barn. The photos turned out great!

This is one of my favorites!

Christmas cookies and Sugar Plum fairies

My 13-year old cousin, Cassandra, has moved to the Austin area to live with her father recently. Her mother is French, and Cassandra and her older brother, Christopher, have grown up primarily a few hours outside of Paris. We're so excited to get to spend time with Cassandra, and Grayson and I have been trying to do lots of things with her. I brought her to my house Saturday for hours of fun holiday baking! We made lots of Christmas cookies, as well as lots of messes! For some reason, every year I have this magnificent vision of how my delicious confections will turn out. Usually, I am incredibly disappointed with my total lack of talent in decorating sugar cookies. Good thing that ugly cookies still taste yummy!

Later that evening we brought Cassandra with us and David's parents to our annual Nutcracker evening. We went for a nice dinner downtown at Louie's 106 (some of the best steak I've ever had!) and then to the ballet. This was a gift to Cassandra from her mother back in France who used to enjoy the Nutcracker when she lived in the US. Cassandra had a great time!

David's parents, Roger and Jerry Lynn

Camels and Kangaroos...

My baby sister turned 27 today! All of our relatives were still in town from Thanksgiving, so we gathered once again for Grayson's birthday. It was an evening of food and fun!

I was so excited to find Strawberry Shortcake wrapping paper to wrap up Grayson's comfy, new pj's! Grayson and I used to love S.S. when we were little, so much that we even had sheets with her all over them! The crazy thing is that when the lights went out, Grayson would start screaming hysterically that there were camels and kangaroos in her bed. Every single night, we would have to turn the light back on, scoop up the camels and kangaroos and take them to the front door, where we would throw them out and tell them never to come back. This nightly ritual went on for quite awhile, until at some point we changed Grayson's sheets and...the camels and kangaroos were gone! Hmmmm...now I don't really remember S.S. having these very large animals as friends, but such is the imagination of a 4 year old. Thankfully, Grayson did not start screaming when she saw the wrapping paper.

Just in case you didn't think my sister was bizarre enough with her strange animal phobias, she also likes to prove or disprove the success of certain experiments she finds online. In this particular contemporary Mr. Wizard experiment, Grayson believed that she could get unpopped kernels of popcorn to, in fact, heat up enough to pop by the supposed radiation that emits from surrounding cell phones. Now, please be aware that this will only be successful if you can make all the phones ring at the same time. So, with the discord of multiple ring tones going off at the same time, we attempted to pop a tiny little snack for ourselves. And....it worked!!! Popcorn kernels began dancing over the countertop to horrible and annoying sounds of multiple cell phones. There was so much radiation that we began to get sunburned, then the cell phones simultaneously burst into flames!!! It was chaos!!! Ok, so this is what Grayson was so positive would happen. But, no, we were left with 7 unpopped kernels of corn. We were so very hungry.

Thanksgiving, #2

On Friday, we had Turkey Day #2 in Bastrop at Roger and Jerry Lynn's house. This is David's side of the family, and Jerry Lynn is the master chef! Turkey, ham, every kind of casserole you can imagine....yummmmmm!

This was also a special holiday because it was Elijah's first Thanksgiving! Elijah was born to David's cousin, Daniel and his wife, Caanon, in August. He gets cuter by the minute!

My cute, and apparently very hungry, husband.

David and baby Elijah

David set up the camera for some family portraits outside. These are his mother's parents, Grandma and PaPa.

Me and David with his parents, Roger and Jerry Lynn

The Jungs, with their newest gift to be thankful for, Elijah.

The whole gang!