Christmas Morning

Someone ate some cookies and drank his milk, and apparently an elf left his hat also. Can you see the awe? Here is what our Christmas morning was like. Fun as always!

Ashley wearing the elf's hat that "got left behind" (wink,wink).

Here's all the goodies. Now remember there's gifts under the tree for 4 little girls( in case you thought "wow, that's a lot of presents")

Ashley loved all of her presents, and gets a kick out of her Tickle Me Elmo.

Jeff finally got his digital picture frame for his office.

Abby really wanted Lego's. To the point that her teacher was so sweet to send me a note telling me how much she like to play with them at school.

Mark with his new hat for the cold weather that they are now getting. Wonder if he's wearing it?

Christmas Eve Night

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, were 4 cute little girls in their matching Christmas pajamas! Trying to get a picture of the 4 of them was interesting.

Ashley decided this was the only she could see the book. Of course she was only in my lap for maybe 5 min.

Hi, Katie! This little girl is the cutest thing!

Here's the best we got! No too bad.

Christmas Eve Day

The weather was pretty ugly on Christmas Eve. Cold and really rainy, yuk. Crafts to the rescue! Abby loves crafts! Mimi brought this little tree craft and it kept her and Abby busy for a while.

I brought a Shrinky Dinks Christmas tree set. Can you believe that Jeff had never done them! They all thought it was pretty cool when they really shrunk! The little tree came out cute.

Jeff's dad and uncle came to visit. We were pretty close to where his dad lives, so it was really nice that were able to spend some of the holidays with them.

Ashley loving on her Marky

Abby loved holding her baby cousin.


Making cookies for Santa. It was pretty funny making them. I brought cookie cutters, but being at vacation house we didn't have "everything" we needed, like flour. Our shapes got a little deformed, but we did the best we could with what we had. We even had some cookies in the shape of "snowballs". Ashley got to decorate her little cookies. She had fun doing it, but she would not eat one.

Love this picture!

Christmas at Seaside

The small town of Seaside is right next to Seagrove, literally right down the street from our house. Cute little town of shops and restaurants.

Pretty tree in the big lawn area.

The girls loved running around. We liked it too.

We found this cute little Christmas area, perfect for pictures.

Abby couldn't resist the bunny ears on Uncle Mark, (a.k.a Marky according to Ashley).

Monkey see, monkey do.

Family picture in front of the little post office. It's a real one, too. It was decorated so pretty.

Rhoads Family Christmas in Seagrove Beach, FL! continued

This was the day that Mark and Stacy arrived with their little ones! Let the fun begin!

Decorating our little tree. My mom brought it, thank goodness.

Mimi and Poppy with Sara! Such a cutie1

Mimi with Katie! What a love! Seriously, could she be any cuter? Look at those eyes!

Mimi in heaven with all of her granddaughters. Getting ready to go out on the beach. This was our version of snow, the white sand! It was so nice to be in cooler weather.

Sara loved her big cousin! They played so well with each other. It really was so cute seeing all of them interacting with each other.

Ashley's turn for a hug from Sara!

Poppy and Mark with the little girls. It was so bright that Ashley's eyes wre getting teary.

Me with my girls!

Mimi watching us from the balcony of the house. Our rooms were upstairs, and we did have a nice balcony up there too.

Rhoads Family Christmas in Seagrove Beach, FL!

For Christmas this year we were able to get together with my parents, and my brother and his family. It was so much fun! We stayed in the house below, Nantucket, and it was perfect for all of us! It had 3 floors. The bottom floor was really a garage though. The main living floors were so nice. Huge kitchen and comfy seating. All couples had king beds to sleep in with private bathrooms also. Really nice when you have kids.



Here we are entering the house for the first time.


Here was our view from our balcony! Pretty awesome!

Here is our balcony. How perfect is that? Kind of looks like Cracker Barrel a bit though, doesn't it?

Here was Abby's little sleeping nook. This was at the end of the hallway upstairs, and she just thought it was the coolest place for her to sleep.

Already for bed and so excited to see Uncle Mark, Aunt Stacy, Sara and Katie in the morning!

Oh Christmas tree...

My favorite part of Christmas! I love going to pick out our tree, it was always a tradition that I did with my dad. I hope that we can pass that on to the girls.



Ashley thought she could help out her daddy a bit with the lights. She was so funny, she kept calling the tree "castle". I think she just had in her mind the lights that were all over Cinderella"s castle and how we had lights on the tree. She eventually did start calling it a tree, but for a few days we had a "castle" in our house.

Abby loves to put up ornaments! Then she likes to rearrange them every so often also. The bottom of my tree has a new look every few days.

Ahhhh! Don't you just love how they look when they're all decorated and lit up? Now we just hope it stays alive till Christmas!