Christmas 2012

We actually sent out Christmas cards for the first time this year, so we decided to have some family pictures taken.

I took Kimball to the Breakfast with Santa activity at the mall and she was so excited to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas. Lots of Cinderella!

There is a neighborhood in Corpus where there are a ton of lights to see and all the neighbors are out on their driveways handing out hot chocolate, candy, etc. It was a ton of fun! There was a huge crowd, so we aren’t sure if we’ll do it next year, but at least we can say we did it.

We wrote our letters to Santa.

Daddy read from the scriptures about the birth of Jesus Christ and we decorated our house. Kevin LOVES to decorate for the holidays, so he does most of it and does the take down afterwards, which is very nice :) With Kevin’s fascination with trains, my dad gave us his Lionel train set that he got as a kid, so Kevin set it up to go around our tree. We still have to clean it up a bit and Kevin needs to repair some parts, so we will have it running next year :)

  

We made our way out to California the Friday before Christmas. Mikalynn brought some of her dress ups to share with Kimball. They had a lot of fun playing together – especially dressing up as different princesses!

Kimball loves puzzles, so we put together a 100 piece princess puzzle.

We had some ping pong tournaments. Kimball and Mikalynn joined in on the fun :) I don’t have many pictures of me pregnant, so here I am 32 weeks pregnant.

My mom always has a nice set up for Christmas Eve dinner!

All the adults were at the big table, while Mikalynn and Kimball sat at the kids table.

 

My mom always has a theme for Christmas and this year was Iron Chef. We got shirts that said “I cook” with different color bandanas. The special ingredient was banana and we had 10 or 15 minutes to come up with a dessert as couples.

  

While we were coming up with desserts, the girls frosted sugar cookies for Santa. I am not sure I would eat them! I am not sure how many times they licked the knife with frosting on it ;) but they had fun!

The Packard’s creation! Mom and Dad were the judges. We each got a certificate of achievement along with a gift card to get a pizookie from B.J.’s.

 

We played the awesome gift card game!

Kimball loved Christmas morning. We hid for Santa and after he left, Kimball said, “Santa is tired, he needs to take a nap”. Santa brought her a Cinderella castle.

  

We tried getting down to the beach for the sunset one day, but just barely missed it.

We went to the park!

We had a great time in California for Christmas!