Berry Christmas Trek 2012: Holiday Recap

It always amazes me how fast Christmas comes and goes. I challenged myself this year to get my "to-do's" done early so I could really soak up the true JOY of the season. Chad and I stay on the road quite a bit during the holidays... We make every effort to see all of our family while we still can... Being the student I am, I always have a long break, and Chad... well lets just say he has an unheard-of-amount of vacation days. No complaints here! I will say we didn't make as big of a trek as last year, but we did make three great stops to spend time with family at each house... Chattanooga, Tupelo, and Little Rock.  You could say it was a rather scenic Christmas...

Our first stop was to see Dad and Jan in Chatty.  It has been almost a year since we've made it up to the mountain... I've missed it so!

Mountain sunrises on the front porch are my favorite:

And the sunsets out back are simply breathtaking... Chatty, you are just too beautiful.

Since we miss "Wardlaw Christmas" with the extended family, Dad made sure we spent some quality time with #themamaw

In Chad's words, we "straight chilled."
Confession: I stayed in my PJ's for majority of the time.
This year was the first year we didn't go to Rock City lights... It has always been a Christmas tradition with Dad- but this year, we settled for the the fire, unhealthy amounts of coffee, and a never-ending rook tournament.  My mamaw is the most intense rook player you'll ever meet.

This year, HERIN had a twist.  HERIN is the reindeer stocking full of gift cards.  Each year, Erin and I (and now Chad and Adam- unfortunately their names didn't get combined into HERIN), draw gift cards out of a stocking...  This includes everything from Target and Anthro to Lowes and Gamestop.  There is a "gold card" every year that is something special but you don't know until you have permission to open it... Last year, the lucky individual who drew the gold card could use it (not knowing what it was) to trade for any card he or she desired from another person. The catch was, if you decided to keep the gold card, you got to open it and see that it was twice the value of the others. This year, the gold card was different and just so happened to be drawn by.... yours truly.  As I was opening the gold card, Dad informed me that there were actually 2 cards... I was to keep the first and the second was to be given to "TBA."  The card on top was:

Yes, that is a VICTORY POINT.  I received a victory point and everyone was immediately directed to the game table to engage in a friendly game of CATAN... well it actually wasn't too friendly as the stakes were high... winner would be the proud recipient of $100 to Amazon that was also wrapped in the "gold card."  Of course I won ;)  I mean, I started with a free victory point... there was no way I was going to lose that battle.

Thanks to my dearest brother-in-law, Adam, I have some fun pictures from the remainder of our time in Chatty (and also an idea of what my Catan winnings will go towards... a new LENS!)

I seemed to get carried away with outside pictures and didn't even get a family picture...Oops.

Our next stop was Tupelo... I was apparently too busy cooking, wrapping, and visiting to take pictures.  How sad is that?  I did get this one of Herbert by Mom's tree...

And stole this one from FB with my favorite girls- Ausycar and the D :)

Oh, and I do have this one of Herbert and the Kellum brothers!

Of course I managed to get pictures of DOGS and not my family. Well, it was a short visit but there's nothing like Christmas Eve with Chacha and the McElroy girls (poor Chad is the only guy). Some of my fondest childhood memories are Christmas Eve's at Chacha and HiDan's. We had family Christmas at Mom's this year due to work on Chacha's house, but we hope to return back to the 862 next year!

Christmas morning we hit the road at 7:30 (with monkey-bread in hand) and headed to Little Rock. Little Rock Christmas can be described in one word:

WHITE.

We lost power Christmas night, and the next morning, we opened the front door to what you see above.  It was absolutely beautiful.

Herbert was in heaven because ICE is his favorite treat!

Such a fun day! (JB doing his thing)

The power stayed out for days... so we cut our trip a little short... but it was good and I am thankful.

Family is so special and I'm so grateful and blessed to have such a great one... or three!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!