Christmas 2012- The Wrap Up!

Picture overload!!! Are you ready?!? Here is the grand finale of Christmas 2012! I wish I would have blogged about this sooner so I could have remembered the cute things the kids said but lo it's been over a month and my memory is no good after 48 hours. I've got one big january post to go before I'm semi current though, so Im at least doing my best!

Oh! I just found a note on my phone where I recorded cute London-isms! Sweet! The first was in regards to our Christmas playlist. While we were busy beeing around the house, I would turn on my phone and play my Christmas playlist. Every single time an Elvis song would come on, London would cover her ears, run out of the room and scream, 'That man is scary!!!' WHATTTTT? Baby girl's afraid of Elvis!!! We MUST remedy this!

The second was one night while we were star gazing, London said, 'We need a telescope so we can see a long long long way to Disney World.' Greatest place on earth. She loves it so much! Okay, on to pictures!!

Christmas Eve. Energy level: infinity. Darlingness: infinity times infinity.

 Me and my sweet thing at our church Christmas Eve service. What a peanut. 

 Santa's snow tracks on Christmas morning!

 Way excited about Santa's stocking delivery! What a fun morning!!

 These kids LOVE their whatever these things are called! Animal light machines...

 Sweet Peeps. 

 Mom and Dad looking at their GIANT photo album. I strayed from my normal company and should've paid more attention to the size of the book! :)

 What cutie pies!!

 What awesome people! So very glad to spend Christmas morning with them!

 London and Andaddy playing with his 'no' button. It's awesome. You push it and it gives you a half dozen hilarious different ways to say no. 'NOT EVEN MAYBE' is my favorite. IT'S SO DAD!!

 Barry and Caden with Caden's first shaving kit!

 I love this one! Love the lights on Caden's face!

 HEAD LAMP :)

 Andaddy teaching Char how to check her oil and other awesome granddad 'good to knows'!

 Caden's new suction arrow bow and arrow....

... and an awesome door shot! Well done, boy!!

 Christmas eve... making cookies for Santa!

 London was SO EXCITED about it being Jesus' birthday so we made him a birthday cake and sang 'Happy Birthday to You'!

 Bubble wrap is THE BEST!!!

 London's new Princess castle which is maybe the coolest thing ever. She was thrilled over it initially but now I adore it because I'll tell Lu to play in it while Im cooking (because I like having her in the same room with me) and she'll pack up her toys and play imaginary games in there for an hour straight. It's the most precious thing in the world to eaves drop on her imagination! So sweet, clever, and funny!

So happy to have her own castle!

 Mom and Dad hooked Barry and me UP with a years supply of pain meds! Whoot! Great gift for inherited pain! :)

 This was pre christmas but it was one of my favorite mom moments to date. We went to Pinkberry, of course, (free bday ice cream and they gave Lu a free one too! COOL!) It's the dead of winter so there weren't too many people there. London had a skip in her step and absolutely tore up her own personal dance floor for 30 full minutes. Never had a care in the world that other people were watching her, she just did her thing with total abandon. I just leaned back and observed her being completely uninhibited. It was just a night of awe over God's goodness at letting me watch this child be so free and innocent and fun! 

 Another awesome day! I think I've already posted this picture but this was our first day of  Christmas break and we were both over the moon about it! We had so much fun this day! She was being all kinds of darling! Life with her is just so good!

 Time lapse!!! Back to Christmas! London's new doctor dress up outfit! So cute! You'll see a pic in my next post that will just melt you to pieces!

Great Christmas, great family, great God. I just love this time to shut everything down and just BE with the people most important to me. A full season of being totally in the moment. Fully engaged. Playful and childish again. Everything slows down. Dinners are relaxed and hours long. There are toys, not tv. Conversations, not computers. Hugs, not texts.

I love community. I love the physicality of it. The embraces, the connecting, the sincerity of it all. Relationships during the holidays become so tangible to me again. It's like you can just bottle up these moments as remembrance of why loving people hard matters so much. It's for times just like these. When you are all together and your heart just swells within you. Love embodied. Love lived out. Man, what a way to live.

It's CHRISTMAS.... in late January! :)

Im trying guys, Im trying!! Christmas morning was magical this year! Relaxed, slow, loving, generous, exciting, perfect. We had our family and Mr. Gary and Mrs. Joan all together for Christmas morning and it was great. There is just nothing more 'at home' than a room full of relatives for me. They know you fully- without make-up, happy, sad, heart broken, grumpy, joyful, bratty, fat, skinny, sick, morning breathy, etc and they love you still. What could be better than that? Below is installment one of Christmas day. Mr. Gary was the featured photographer for this series! More to come! These are kind of in alphabetical order because I named them all prior to bringing them over!

 {boys} 

 Charley Rhea with the keys to her new car!!! How exciting!!

 The scene

 I want to take a quick second to talk about how much I love this woman. She is totally spectacular. She has been so kind and loving and welcoming and hospitable to both London and me this year. FAR beyond normal 'sister in law' duties. She honestly is my best friend and I am SO INCREDIBLY thankful she's a part of my family. I wish I had an ounce of her kindness and patience. Such an amazing person. God is so good to have given her to us!

 A new princess dress! Oh happy day!!!!

 My heavens to betsy, she's cute. 

 Archie made it to family Christmas too! :)

 Paparazzi! 

 Ol' Pops did AWESOME and got all the girls in the family very generous gift cards to this darling shop in Columbus! We were all thrilled, so he got a big ole girl group hug from the whole lot of us! :)

 I love these head lamp shots!

 Sweetest girls on the planet!

Pre-Christmas Festivities

Well, in true blog fashion, life has gotten in the way of my blogging time! I say that.... I had an awful case of insomnia last week where I could've blogged my entire life, day by day, but I decided getting on the computer would keep me up later than I already was... so I voted against it!

We're still in Christmas season here on the good ole family blog. Who's excited? I AM!!! I have lots to blog about... mostly about God's incredible goodness, but I am going to try to knock out all of the Christmas posts so I stay in a time line that makes sense! I really need to get the blogger app for my phone so I can do this on the go, but it's like $3 and has awful reviews.... all of that to say, please just hang with me here! If you haven't subscribed via email, maybe it's a good idea to do that so you don't check the blog and get disappointed when there's nothing new to read! :) {click to the right where it says 'Subscribe to the Rhea Lane Families by Email!'}

Still working our way into Christmas, and in no particular order, here was life the two weeks before Christmas day!

A dear friend from my weekend at Emmaus hand knitted scarves for our little group! They are darling! I got it in the mail and because of all the bright colors, London quickly claimed it as her own! This picture is just too cute for words!

 Baby had a little hand injury at school, then banged her fingers up a few times at home. We added one more band aid right after I took this picture. This was a hard week on her poor little hands, but Dora was representing strong!!

 London's school Christmas program. It was so cute! Her little class only sang one song, which none of them sang because they were too distracted, but they were adorable none-the-less!

 As soon as London's song was over, they ushered her class out of the auditorium. She was not happy to be leaving momma after being so excited that she had company in the middle of the day!

The Thomas' gave us one of their family Christmas cards. This was my backseat view for about a week. London held onto that card like it was a priceless treasure and would stare longingly at it as we drove everyday! We love us some Knox and Lucas!

 One of my favorite Mommy days ever. We went for a run one morning and struck up a conversation with a woman who was training for a marathon. She had 1 mile left of a 17 mile training run so we tried to encourage her by telling her she was almost there and she could do it! For the entire rest of our run, anytime we would pass a girl running, Lu would scream 'WAY TO GO!! YOU CAN DO IT!!' I was too happy for words. 

One of my favorite nights of the year. Our company has our annual Christmas party at The Club in Birmingham, which is a great restaurant that looks out over the city. It is so ritzy and dreamy to be all dressed up and looking out over all the twinkling lights of the city. I just love all the wives of these boys I work with and we had a ball catching up and celebrating a great year at work! I left with a heart full of gratitude and feeling very blessed that God landed us in this beautiful city full of terrific folks. 

The next morning was my birthday and I woke to friends bearing gifts! What a way to start the day! My best friend made me breakfast cupcakes and gave me the most darling phone cover you've ever seen in all of your life! Another sweetest friend brought me a mega cup of my favorite coffee (that doesn't taste like coffee!) A few hours later, the best sis-in-law on the planet showed up with a giant Pinkberry on ice! BEST DAY EVER! I don't deserve friends and family this good. 

 A few days later we kicked off Christmas break and two weeks of sweet hangs with this babe! I was so very excited for some much needed time off! Spending time with Lu in anticipation for Christmas was just too much fun! We both acted like wild child kids pretty much the whole break!

 "Make the Baby in the Bed" game is too much fun! I don't think I'll ever lose the memory of these sweet giggle squeals! 

This is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. Caden and Lizzy's school Christmas project was to color scenes from The Night Before Christmas. Here are their Santa drawings. This owns me. How darling is this? Caden's is on the left and Lizzy's on the right. 

 My christmas break project was to put together a gallery wall that I've been working on for months now! It is busy, but I LOVE IT. All the pictures have such great memories behind them and I still just stand in the kitchen and stare at the wall. It is the happiest place in my house! My two favorite pieces are a frame that has handwritten recipes from both of my grandmothers then just below that is a picture of Papa as a young man, standing by the well at his grocery store. Umm. My heritage. There hanging on my wall. My heart swells within me. 

A Very Sweet Sixteen

I just can't believe it. Baby girl Charley turned 16 on December 19th. My word. The years have flown by in the blink of an eye. I so clearly remember the day she was born. That sweet, tiny little bundle of love. And I remember her being such an organized little girl.. lining her toy plates and bowls up by size and color order. I remember buying her little girly school supplies before she started grade school then watching with bittersweet feelings as she moved on up the line to high school. Here she is half way through high school. Oh my heart....

Her sweet mom and dad threw Charley a surprise 16th birthday party at Barry's house and they went all out! I wasn't there for it but they had an awesome DJ and dance floor. They had a big celebrity looking wall that said 'Charley's Sweet 16' where all the kids could dress up with crazy accessories and pose for pictures in front of it. They had a hot chocolate bar outside and snacks inside. About 30 of Charley's best friends all came by to party on!

A week or so later, she jumped in my car to head to family dinner. I asked how her party was and she talked 90 to nothing for the next 15 minutes. It was great! She had a total blast! I love her so very much so it just thrills me to no end when people make a huge fuss over this sweet child! She is such a doll and I'm so glad that she had a super memorable 16th birthday! Happy Birthday, you beautiful girl!! I love you so much!!

Caden had the flu but did not miss the opportunity to be a total party animal! Charley said he danced and danced and danced!