Texas Johnson’s Party Y’All

My week has just been full of lots of good Christmas parties. I guess that’s one of the great things about Christmastime…getting together w/ family and friends and creating memories. Anyways, Mom & Dad & Nate & Autumn (we missed Nick…he had to work) came and picked me up after work and we headed out to Aunt Sandy & Uncle Robert’s house for our Christmas party. This picture doesn’t do it justice, but it was a gorgeous sunset w/ all sorts of shades of pink.

We got stuck in traffic for about 45 minutes due to 2 different car accidents, so when we got there, everyone else had already eaten. Aunt Sandy had made a delicious salad w/ strawberries and candied almonds w/ a poppy seed dressing. Then we had ham party roll ups (basically it’s pieces of ham wrapped around a slice of cheese and stuffing) w/ an apricot sauce. It was incredibly tasty.

I love how cute Autumn looks in this absolutely sweet skirt that I bought from my friend, Jennifer. You should check out her blog and etsy shop. She’s incredibly talented.

After eating and playing for a while, we had a special visitor knock on the door and Autumn did NOT like the visitor and did NOT want to go near him. She ran to Papa to protect her.

I went over to Santa to give him a kiss to show Autumn it was ok to be near Santa and that he was nice. “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus…”

Even w/ me sitting there next to her, she wasn’t too sure about this whole Santa business. Just look at that look on her face. But, she eventually warmed up to Santa once she saw that he was nice.

All of the little kids were so excited to get a present from Santa Claus (even Caleb was even though it doesn’t look like it in this picture). It was time for Santa to leave to go back up to the North Pole and get everything ready for Christmas (it is just a week away after all). Shane didn’t want him to go and offered to go out and help Santa feed his reindeer! It was so cute!

After Santa left, it was time for the white elephant gifts. Brooke got a Dora the Explorer whistle that would make bubbles when you blow it. When it came time for Caleb’s turn, he walked right over to Brooke and yanked the whistle off her neck and put it on his. We were all in such shock that he even knew he could do that (b/c the way we do white elephant gifts is that you can steal someone else’s gift). I wasn’t able to capture it in time, but the look on Brooke’s face when he did that was priceless. Poor little thing! But we couldn’t help from laughing b/c of how shocked we were that Caleb stole it in the first place.

Nate got these sculpted pouch boxers. Thank goodness we weren’t at the Hatch Christmas party where the rule is that you have to try on any articles of clothing…that could have been all sorts of awkward!

After the white elephant gifts, the kids went upstairs to play w/ all their new toys. The adults played Apples to Apples and had a riot playing it and laughing and talking together. The kids came down and little did I know, but there were more gifts. Heather made these too cute tutus for the two little girls. They LOVED them and wore them the whole rest of the night. It was so fun to share the evening w/ family tonight and create some fun memories.