Back home from holiday in TN

We are back home in Florida from our holiday trip to TN. I have hundreds of photos to sort through and tweak but here is a small sampling.

Kylie preparing cookies and milk for Santa and broccoli and water for the reindeer. Santa left Kylie a note thanking her for both.


We had our Christmas on Christmas Eve. I was pretty sure I heard Kylie rattling around with her presents around 5:00am but she let us sleep until 6:30. Then it was time to see what Santa had brought.



Kylie was very thorough and methodical in opening her presents. For example, we got her a set of alphabet stamps. She wanted to stamp her name, and our names before opening any more presents. She got a musical jewelry box and she left the living room to find the perfect place for it in her bedroom. She got five scented lip balms and she again left the tree and all of her presents to go line up the lip balms just so on her nightstand. You get the picture. Karen and I were cracking up. We joked that we would have torn through the few presents Kylie had in about five minutes. But with Kylie, opening presents lasted over an hour. It was lovely. With lots of her exclamations of "I really wanted that from Santa!"

Friday afternoon we drove halfway to TN and Kylie got to sleep on a pull-out sofa of our hotel's living room suite. Kylie went right to sleep--to my very great relief!


On Saturday, we finished the journey to TN and had Christmas with Karen's family. It was incredible for Karen's Mom and Dad to have all of their children and grandchildren gathered together at the same time.








Kylie had really hoped for a white Christmas. She got her wish! These are Kylie's cousins which Kylie has nick-named her "girly girls". They played with Kylie constantly. I wanted to bundle all of her cousins up and take them home with me to Florida because they were so patient with Kylie--letting her boss them around and such.


Then there was a fantastic Christmas with my Mom


and Dad.


There was a fun trip to the mall and Build-a-Bear compliments of Karen's brother Ted.


And finally more driving and staying in hotels.


It was a really wonderful trip. And I very glad to be home!

Now, back to sorting through those photos.