Bergman Christmas

The second half of our Arkansas trip was spent in my hometown. I love going back there. So relaxing, in the country, with everything to do and lots of games to play.

Maelea loves playing with all of the toys and things at Pappy and Pippo's. Mom seems to have something new for her to play with each time we come up there. This time, she got to dig in the kitchen cabinets in the containers and cookie racks.


Then she got hot I guess and started trying to cool off.





And since we wanted to do Christmas eve and day at our house and Garrett and Sheree did too, we did Christmas gifts and fun on Wednesday. Maelea looooved her gifts and had a good time opening them. She was very interested in what Reese got too.







The adults got some neat things too!





And dad got mom the big ticket item on her list this year. I'm jealous.


More to come on Christmas at our home!

Maelea and Reese

I did a little better job of taking pictures during Christmas. Not alot better, just a little better.
It makes me so darn happy to see Maelea play with Reese. When Reese was tiny, it made me so darn nervous. Now she does so good with her and Reese is good too. She doesn't get too excited but loves to watch Maelea...and pull her hair.






I can't wait to see the things these two will get into through the years.

It's finally beginning to look alot like Christmas

As teachers we get a nice break for holidays. In my opinion, the two most needed breaks are the Thanksgiving break and Summer break. The other breaks are great and I enjoy them all so much.
And every break we get, we travel. Since we are not close to our families, we drive for a substantial part of our breaks. We travel to see our families, but we also have those breaks as teachers for a reason.
We need them, badly.
That being said, we spent less than a week in Arkansas for Christmas break. As much as we love seeing everyone, we needed this year to be relaxing, and at home, and a start to our Christmas traditions of being at home on Christmas eve and day with Maelea.

So we started in Humphrey. Maelea played with some of her dad's old crayons and won one of his blue ribbons for the sack race. I had to inform him that the blue meant first place, and that Steph and I had won several of those.





Maelea got to meet Jeffrey's mom at church on Sunday. She went to her quite easily, because as you can see, Mrs. Owens was packin' the bling. And since I don't wear much jewelry at all, Maelea is highly attracted to all things accessory related.


Maelea played with Poppy.


And was easily confused by how much he and Clarence look alike. It is an easy mix up.


And she enjoyed some play time with Grammie.



So we didn't get to see everyone that we may normally get to see or visit as much as we usually do on our breaks, but we are at home and this break is the most rested I have ever been as a teacher.

hold up, wait a minute

Of course, in true Mary Beth blogging fashion, I am behind on posting.
So I will take you back to my birthday weekend, which was AWESOME. We got to have dinner with friends, twice. Some that I hadn't seen in awhile. And we got to go to the cowboys game that Sunday. Fun times ten.




Oh and more great news, Nancy and Micah are engaged!!! I am so excited for them!

And then there was the second annual gaudy day at school. Since I was the reining champ, I felt that I had to really go all out this year to top last year.


I kinda think I did. I won, again. It could have been the hair or the super souther, steel magnolias accent that I used the entire day.

Where's the elf?

Thank you so much to Lynn for getting Maelea our Elf on the Shelf. She loooves him. And I can't wait to really get into all the neat things we can do with him next year, when she understands it a little better.






She did not want to take her hand off the box. She didn't want him to get out of her sight.



She loved the book too.




And boy she loves her elf. She loves to hug and kiss him and carry him around. I can't wait until she can give him a name. I'm hoping for something cute, but we'll see next year!