oh how I love Christmas time.

I know this is a month late, but I was just looking through our photos from our Christmas break - which was amazing - and wishing we could go back. I miss our christmas tree. and our christmas lights. and our stockings. and drinking hot chocolate every night. and signing e-mails with merry christmas. and constatnly being reminded of the birth of our Savior.

(here's a picture of our tree :)

Mark and I both had two full weeks off for Christmas and we were so blessed to have time to spend with both of our families and friends. We spent the week of Christmas in Amarillo with the whole Mason family. I always LOVE it when all the Mason kids are together. We had a blast eating lots of yummy food (from the new and improved Mason kitchen which we all played a part in finishing just in time for Christmas Eve dinner).

Our first gingerbread house:

One of my favorite presents - a painting of our first little house!

Anne Marie and I at dinner on Christmas Day.

We drove from Amarillo back to Lubbock on the 27th to pick up Gunner and then drive to Ft. Worth. We dropped Gunner off at camp Mayse for the week (I can't tell you how thankful we are that Mark's cousins love to take care of Gunner!). We spent the evening with my family and my Grandmama in Ft. Worth then drove the next day with my family all the way to Baton Rouge to meet the cousins. We had a blast in BR, as always, laughing, shopping and playing games for three days.

My other favorite present, a 'Project Runway - limited edition' sewing machine! I love it! I've been working on some placemats as my first project and they're super cute if I say so myself :)
Shopping with the girls.

boys playing Settlers of Catan - our new favorite game!

The whole family played Four on a Couch! (it was the longest game in the history of Four on a Couch and of course, the women won!)

Then Mark and I drove back to the Dallas area and met our friends, Adam and Jenni, at the Hefton's lake house to welcome in the New Year. It was the perfect, relaxing New Year's Eve!
(photos coming)

We spent the next few days in Dallas shopping and seeing friends. The break was fantastic and all the driving was so worth it, but needless to say we were glad to get home.

In other news.... a week before Christmas I got a really bad 24 hour bug!! While spending a good eight hours extremely sick in the bathroom I got really dehydrated, passed out and hit my head on the tile floor resulting in this lovely black eye:

The funny part was.... I spent the whole 12 hours of the next day in bed. Mark was soooo sweet and took great care of me but he kept asking if I wanted to get up and wash my face b/c I still had my make up from the day before..... when I finally looked in the mirror much later I saw the black eye and realized that's what Mark was talking about. He thought it was make up!! haha