This Is Me...Libby Lee: Christmas with the Wards & Herndons

After we left the Wiseman's on Christmas Eve day, we headed back to Springfield to stop off at our house for a few hours, and then off again to our church's Christmas Eve service. Ross has been going to our church, Christ Community Church, for about 13 years now and had never been to a Christmas Eve service there before. I hadn't been to a Christmas Eve service in probably 10 years, so both of us were very excited to go. I was even more excited when I found out my family (Mom, Dad, Stephanie, Nathan, Trevor, Cody) decided, last minute, to go, too.

After the service, we hit the road again and headed out to Ash Grove to spend the night and Christmas day celebrating Christmas with the Wards and Herndons. We opened a few presents on Christmas Eve night and then, of course, took pictures, and watched as Trevor and Cody set out milk and cookies for Santa!

Trevor age 9 and Cody age 7

Ross and Libby Wiseman, Stephanie and Nathan Herndon, Cody Herndon, Terry and Wanda Ward, Trevor Herndon.

The Herndons in their matching Grinch shirts!

Merry Christmas from us!

Milk and cookies for Santa. This year Santa got a special note from each boy!

Ross and I woke up Christmas morning to little voices saying "Get up!" "We want to see what Santa brought us!" It's tradition in the Ward house that you can't go out to the family room to see what Santa brought until everyone is up and the adults have had a chance to get coffee and get set up to take pictures of the "reveal." In fact, I remember a few Christmases where Stephanie and I had to drag Mom and Dad out of bed! I think they often did this on purpose! This killed us as kids, and kills Trevor and Cody today! But once we finally got to go out to the family room and see our presents, the awful waiting time was soon forgotten!

Opening Santa's gifts!

After looking at what Santa left, we had breakfast which consisted of coffee cake, bacon, and eggs...traditional Ward Christmas breakfast. Oh, and sparkling grape juice. Never, never, never forget the sparkling grape juice - in white and red, too!

When breakfast was over we went back to the family room to open presents. For as long as I can remember, we would each take turns opening our presents, instead of everyone opening at once. This worked just fine, at least until the kids got old enough to really "get" what opening presents was all about! We quickly learned to let the kids open all their presents and then send them to another room to play with their gifts while the adults opened their presents!

The picture below is kind of fuzzy, but notice the hat that Cody has on. I believe the official name of this hat is a "Newsboy Cap," but we refer to it as a "Poppy Hat." For as long as I can remember, my Dad has been wearing hats like these and over the past few years, Cody has started doing the same. We gave Cody a Poppy Hat and he also got one from Stephanie and Nathan. He was stoked! Cody is quite the fashionista, and it was so cute when he opened a shirt/tie combo and then held it up to each of his hats showing how they'd go together so well! But, probably the funniest thing is that Trevor got the same shirt/tie combo and couldn't care less about it!

Last fall I became very interested in crafts, thanks to Pinterest. One night I had some girlfriends over and we made coasters using tiles, scrapbook paper, and ModPodge. At a garage sale last summer, my Mom found some Guinness boxers that she bought for Ross...more so as a joke. Ross liked them, but didn't want to wear another man's boxers, so put them in the giveaway pile. I recovered them, figuring I could repurpose them somehow. And I did. I repurposed them into a coaster for Ross' Man Cave! We had a good laugh about this, but he loved it!

My mom got a Pandora bracelet for her 60th birthday so I got her an airplane charm to remember her solo flight out to Arizona last summer to visit me and my Great Aunt Blanche. She loved it!