Merry Christmas!

Christmas time at our house is celebrating the birth of the Savior, putting up Christmas trees and lights, decorating our columns like candy canes, adding on to our Advent calendars, watching Elf, listening to Christmas mixes on Pandora, driving to see lights, shopping for good deals, giving gifts, receiving gifts, eating too many sweets, staying up late, and spending lots of time with friends and family!
Our church Christmas party was a few weeks ago, and it was Hazel's first time to see Santa. She was not a fan, so I had to sit on his lap to help her feel comfortable. Santa said it wasn't the first time. Aunt Natalie made her the adorable ribbon shirt.

This year James's brother Chris came to visit with his wife Christina and their 4 kids. We were so excited because we haven't seen them since Hazel was 1 month old! Here's the Palmer family that was here for the holidays. We're missing Tod, Amy, and Dave and their families.

Here are some of the grandkids with Grandpa Palmer. Hazel had to be the one sitting on Grandpa's lap because no one else is allowed to get his attention. She acts like an only grandchild, not the 17th.

This is a random shot of James and some of his friends playing Smash Brothers. It never gets old... to them. The wives made chocolate rolo cookies.

Christmas Eve dinner was just delicious. After we ate, we acted out the Nativity with stuffed animals for the kids and opened up some gifts. Hazel opened up her Christmas Eve jammies at home, and she immediately put them on her head. Cute. I didn't get a picture of her in her dress before church on Christmas day because we hardly got it on her before we left. We're lucky we got her tights on, and shoes were just too much. She was still as adorable as ever though.

A couple of days later we went to the Fort Worth Zoo. Hazel loved seeing all the animals, especially the birds. I was hesitant about going in the big enclosed bird cage because James said we'd get droppings on us, but as it turned out, we came out clean! And Hazel loved it.

My favorite was the white tiger. This picture is just a zoomed phone picture, so it's not that great. James's favorites were the giraffes... I won't say why. Hazel also liked the monkeys, and I think that's because she likes to dance around and eat bananas all day.

Here are the little monkeys at home - Cohlee and Hazel.

Merry late Christmas to everyone!