Merry, Merry, Happy, Happy!

 Happy New Year, friends! I trust you're all off to a wonderful 2013 and have stuck with your resolutions. It's been about 33 hours so if not, you might want to rethink things. I kid. But clearly my resolve to not buy another 1/2 gallon of Peppermint Blue Bell ice cream was nothing more than a stab at tradition.

We had a wonderful, very merry Christmas around here followed by an incredibly uneventful NYE in which we were asleep by 11:15 and awoken by midnight texts from my NANA who is a bigger baller than we are. Nothing like feeling pathetic and geriatric to kick off the new year. Maybe we'll get a life in 2013. Or maybe we'll have twins...and beg to be asleep by 11:15 to kick off 2014!

Back to Christmas...on Christmas Eve-eve nothing says "family" like a group of competitive people hitting the bowling alley. We split up into teams of 5 and amazingly enough, each team won 1 round. The urge to win got us talking about a 3rd game but the urge to eat won out so we ended things amicably. Plus, Nana bowled a 130 the second game so how can you compete with that? We ended on that booty kicking.

Mom and Nana- don't let the sweet faces fool you. They will tear you up on the lanes.

 Teeny, taking her bow! Haha.

 Team Mendenhall

Nothing says Merry quite like this!

And in the spirit of keeping it real...this is what I got while setting the timer on the camera. The "in between" shots are always my favorite :) 

I watched Love Actually, The Holiday, and half of ELF while wrapping my gifts...

 And had a little help from Santa!

 We celebrated Christmas with my family on Christmas Eve. Our tradition consists of our Christmas Eve service at church followed by dinner at home, a few games, and opening gifts. 

 "kid picture"

Merry Christmas from the Mendenhalls!

 We had a visit from Santa and his reindeer! We caught them red pawed. LOVE.

On Christmas day we headed an hour south and had a wonderful couple of days with David's family! Sadly, I took my camera and my tripod and we never took pictures! These are the only ones I have taken with phones. Above: David, me and my sister-in-law, Kate in our annual "stocking photo". :)

The special surprise were these precious, priceless stockings my mother in law made for the babies!! They are DARLING and all of the buttons belonged to David's grandmother. Hers has a tiny pink button on the bottom and the heart in the middle. His has a tiny blue button and the star in the middle Both have a button in the middle that Dave's grandmother hand crocheted. I absolutely adore them!

In all, we had a wonderful, relaxing, Christ centered, fun, family Christmas and we are so thankful for the blessings this Christmas brought.

Now we're so excited for what 2013 has to offer! Most notably...the arrival of 2 new Mendenhalls!

On that note...we have NAMES! We've ordered cribs, ordered the glider, registered, and on that note... my house looks like a bomb went off because I'm cleaning every closet, every drawer, every everything to get all of the "stuff" out of our house so we have a place for all of the babies new "stuff". How can a human so tiny require so much STUFF!!

Dear 2013, let's do this!