Derek and I left Troy on December 20th and returned on the 31st, we had a great time traveling around the state as a family of three and Luke was as sweet as he could be the entire time.
We started our two week journey in Tuscaloosa. My grandmother had flown in from Illinois to spend the weekend before Christmas in Troy with us and then we drove her to my Dad's house the Monday before. We spent 4 days in Tuscaloosa hanging out with my dad, stepmom and grandmother. Luke experienced his first round of presents and pretty much slept through the whole process even though the majority of gifts under the tree were for him. He got an aquarium to put on his crib, an ornament, a glow worm, and money to start him a savings account among other things. We celebrated Christmas, my birthday, and my grandmother's birthday on the 23rd since we were headed to Crossville on Christmas Eve. Dad and Kris got Grandma and me a cake from Publix. Despite being delicious the Publix bakery misheard my stepmom when she ordered it:
That's right folks, "Happy Birthday Barbara (my grandmother) and LeFlie (that'd be me)." We had a great time trying to decide what the baker was thinking while decorating the cake. Maybe she thought we were frenchies. Anyway, the cake really was delicious and will definitely go down in history as the most memorable cake I've ever had. And needless to say, you should always inspect your cake before leaving the bakery.
Our next stop was Crossville; we arrived on Christmas Eve and opened more gifts. We started the gift opening process with Papa reading Luke the Christmas story. This was such a special moment, even though Luke isn't old enough to understand the true meaning of Christmas, I look forward to teaching him. On to gifts...pretty much same story, most of the gifts were for Luke and he slept the entire time. He got a golf club, lullaby seahorse, mobile for his crib (yes, his crib is pretty pimp now), and some more toys and books. And the highlight of the night was a visit from, yep, you guessed it, Santa:
We spent a few more days in Crossville with Derek's family and then headed to Gardendale to see several friends. The next few days included hang out time with the Smith's, Haubers', Hughes', Wingo's, Rice's, Travis' and Jordan's. It was so great to spend a few days catching up with such special friends. We really are blessed to have so many wonderful friends, and that's just to name a few. We headed home on the 31st and man was it good to be home. We had such a great time spending the holidays with family and friends but traveling with a 2 month old did me in. It was nice to be home and get back to some kind of normalcy.
I also wanted to include this story since it was so special to us:
We ate breakfast on the 22nd with our good friends the Wilson's who are expecting baby number three in May (they currently have 2 boys). They informed us that they had pictures from their 20 week ultrasound which told the sex of the new baby. They had not yet looked at them becuase they wanted it to be a Christmas suprise. They asked us to open the pictures and pick out a blue or pink outfit for them to unwrap on Christmas day. We were honored and so we opened the pictures and then headed off to the mall to get them a BLUE outfit. They will be having baby boy number 3! We couldn't be any more excited for them.
