Christmas at the Casteel's

We had Christmas dinner at home last night and had such a good time! Lora, Chris, Olivia, and Jordan were here as well and Brandy and family and Seth and Katie.... Fifteen family members all at the same dinner table! Larkin was so excited to have his cousins and his niece and nephews with him for the weekend! Larkin and I also picked out Aunt Sissy's birthday present and gave it to her last night (not sure if we will see her again before her birthday....Larkin did a great job...Aunt Sissy really liked here new flat wallet....at first he wanted to get one with an S on it, but settled with one with the letter L on it for Lora!) Definitely a Christmas to remember.....one where a Mother has all her children together in the same room!

Here are a few pictures:

Our newest addition Baby DON THAN with the tradtional Christmas bow on his head!

Our Christmas Weekend

No sushi for the little guy....just Mommy


Last weekend we took Larkin to the Opryland Hotel and went to see the Rockettes and How the Grinch Stole Christmas Ice. We had such a great time and Larkin had his picture made with the REAL Santa Claus! Larkin said he didn't want to see girls dancing and singing, but I told him there were characters there also....well, YeeHa, he had a great time and loved the Rockettes! Sunday morning we went to see ICE and I cannot even begin to tell you how many times he slid down the slides in that 9 degree room. If you go, they give you a large parka (clean - they put the parkas in the washing machine after you take them off) to wear. I will tell you that we layered our clothes, but before we got out of there I was wishing for a second layer of socks, gloves, and a NOSE sock (my nose was sooo cold!). It was so much fun and I would have loved to have taken all the kids with me! Maybe next year it would be fun to just spend the weekend together and maybe not do so many gifts!

Larkin sliding down the slide at ICE! Mommy and Daddy went too! It was fun!

The Gingerbread House 08

The GingerBread House Gang! We had so much fun building the Gingerbread House and even more fun putting the candy on it! Taye Bug helped a little, but soon found other things to do! I could not believe how much fun we had....each child just settled into a certain job of decorating and it went really smooth! Isn't this a great group of children!

The Tater Tot...a million smiles a minute!

The Chubby baby brother (and everyone knows why!).

This child loves to eat!

He is growing so fast and is about 14 pounds at 10 weeks.

What a team (when they are not teasing each other!)

Brooke and Taye even ate part of the roof and they loved it, especially the candy!