Christmas Card Treasures 2011 - 2012

For those of you who send Christmas cards and wonder what people eventually do with them...

We keep them...

And will enjoy looking back at them in years to come.

Thank you and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2012 from the Douglas Family!

Merry Christmas from the Douglas Family!

We hope you all had a blessed Christmas as we did.

We thought we would share with you some of the highlights of our Christmas...

Every year we take a picture of what our kids see when they come in to find what Santa brought them.  

Here is this year's Santa (he was good to our girls)...

They had a great time playing with their gifts and opening their gifts from Nana.  We were happy to have her with us for a few days this Christmas.  The dolls that she gave the girls were one of their favorite gifts.

On Christmas Eve we enjoyed a nice dinner out with Sandy, Mom and Dad and Granny Hilda.  

Then we headed to Pantego together for the Christmas Eve Service.  

We were so proud of Audrey and Alaina in the nativity.  Audrey was Mary and Alaina was a sheep.  It was so fun for them and they both did a great job (although our sheep couldn't keep her hands out of the hay in the manger....much to her shepherd's chagrin.)

Here they are with some of their friends...

Audrey was a precious Mary.  We practiced holding a baby just right.

I love Joseph's converse tennis shoes.  Perfect.  Our Pastor had him put his arm around Mary.  He tried to get him to give her a kiss on the cheek, but Joseph was having none of that...although I think he considered it for a brief second.

Mary gave us a sweet wave when she sat down in the stable.

...then came our little sheep.  They said she was the smallest sheep they'd ever had.  We didn't know if Laina would go for being in the navity.  Thought she might refuse to go on, but go on she did....wasn't an ounce of fear in her.  She's the one in the back of the herd in both of these pics...

Once she arrived at the stable she quickly made it over close to her sister and proceeded to play in the manger hay.  Not sure if Audrey was telling her not to do that, but I know her shepherd was getting onto her.  You can see her little head popped over the corner of the manger in these pics.  She even pulled out some hay and turned around to hand it to a Wise Man.  Luckily she wasn't too distracting....or at least there was another sheep that was more distracting than she was.  :)  ...I'm just sayin.

Sheep pals...

And some of our favorite friends after the service...

It was a great Christmas Eve with our family and friends.

And then came Christmas morning.  You've already seen our Santa pics.  Here are some pics from Christmas at Gia and Bapa's house.

The awesome tent Aunt Sarah, Uncle Eddie, Cate, Caroline and Cole gave the girls.  They LOVED it!

And did I mention that it snowed on Christmas? Yep.  That doesn't always happen here in Dallas so we were excited.  The girls loved playing in the snow.

More presents.  Here are some of Alaina's favorite smiles these days...

Bikes!  Bikes!  Bikes!

I love the excitement in these faces...

Sweet Cousins... (just wish we'd gotten one of Caroline!~)

And after Christmas, Troy headed out hunting for a few days while the girls stayed at Gia and Bapa's.  Audrey got some sweet Shirley temple paper dolls from Aunt Sarah and fam. which prompted us to get out all of Mommy's old paper dolls.  Audrey had a great time playing with them all...

She had me take a new picture every time she dressed a new doll and set it up.

Here's a picture of Mommy's childhood....Boy these bring back some great memories....

It was a sweet Christmas with our family.  We so enjoyed our time with Nana, Granny Hilda, The Taylor's and Walkers and with our church family.  How blessed we are!

And as this Christmas is now behind us, we look forward to great things in the days to come.

Have you heard our news???

(and no, we're not having another baby!)

Christmas Decor 2012...the girl's part...

It's November 26 and the Douglas girls were very busy today.

We started by clean clean cleaning the house to the wonderful sound of Christmas music throughout the house....the girlies did more dancing than cleaning really.

And after all was clean...Christmas arrived...

Alaina was a good little ornament hanger this year.  

Big difference from last year when she just took all of the ornaments off the tree.

Two happy sisters and tree # 1 completed.

The stockings were hung by the...bookcase...with care...

And tree #2...I'm putting both pictures in because they're just cute...

One last pose from our decorating duo...

and then after all the decorating was done I found these sweet girls reading a Christmas book together under the tree.  What a perfect ending to a Christmas decorating day.

Almost as perfect as them being snug in their beds now as I write.

Now...Daddy's part of decorating is to come...the outside!

3 Year Old Room

Now that Alaina has turned 3, so has her bedroom. 

No more baby pictures for this big girl...

Audrey has a neat place to hang all her artwork.  

Alaina needed somewhere special to hang hers too.

a model Nettie, fun tree, and new lamp from Gia and Bapa

and her own play clock from Aunt Sarah...just like Mommy had when she was little.

and last, but certainly not least, Gia had a special picture painted to go over Laina's bed.  Can you see the 3 sweet characters in the center?   My 3 girls.

And the words over the oval say,

 "My God is so big so strong and so mighty there's nothing my God cannot do."

(Audrey and Alaina's favorite song right now.)

How special for our big girl.

Thank you Gia for all your sweet treats for Laina Beth.

Big Girls in November

A Sunday in November...

Sweet and Sassy

A 3 year old ready to go to church

and a big girl in for a big day...church and then a lunch date and the Rockette's with her Gia.

Happy Birthday Our Little 3 Year Old!

Sweet and spunky little Laina,

we are so blessed by you every day.

Happy Birthday sweetheart!

Love, Mommy, Daddy and Sissy.

Hallooooweeen 2012

 What a fun day the Douglas girls had Trick or Treating our way around town.

The day began with a visit to the sweet ladies in our church office.

Then we showed up at Daddy's office to bring a little Halloween cheer.

And here we are ready to set out for an evening of fun...

 Our little Cupcake and Princess Jasmine...

We enjoyed most of the evening over at the Lee's Halloween Extraordinaire...

Ready to start our Trick or Treat fun...

 Scary little monsters...

The girls did a great job of saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you."

Alaina got really friendly the further we went.  

She even asked a girl who came to the door, "who's your husband?"  And the girl quite obviously didn't know what to do with that question.

We tried to explain to Alaina that we weren't going to ask people questions like that.  Just stick to "Trick or Treat."  And she mostly did...except for the frequent telling that she was a cupcake.

Up the walk with Alaina leading the way...

Mommy wasn't just holding Laina for a photo op here.  

She wouldn't walk by this house on her own.

Sweet sisters loved Trick or Treating together.

The Lee's party for the neighborhood...

And after leaving the Lee's we made it back to our neighborhood where we had to go visit Mr. Wade and Mr. Bonnie's houses.

And finally...home to spread out the stash.

Man, these girls brought it in.

And to top off the evening before bed...

a little fluoride rinse for everyone.  :)

Cheers!