A little before Christmas we took a trip to Louisiana for the Mizell family reunion with Angie’s mom. While we were there we stayed with Papa Chuck and Kat and were able to see Angie’s BawBaw (Mallory’s great grandmother). Kylie and Mallory both got to ride the 4-wheeler, though Mallory didn’t try jumping the driveway like her big sis.

Angie’s mom came up for Thanksgiving and afterward helped decorate for Christmas. Jason and Kristen York joined us for Thanksgiving dinner with their three little ones. Those pictures/video deserve their own entry, so we’ll save them for later. We had a baked turkey on Thursday, and then fried one on Sunday for dinner with Mom/Barry/Matt/Lauren.

Angie and I both took off the last couple weeks of year and the week before Christmas we made a trip through North and South Carolina to see family. Dad is now in South Carolina, which is much much better than Michigan from a distance perspective (probably from a weather perspective too). He seems to be enjoying his time outside of work, spending most of it hiking and learning to square dance. MeeMaw and PeePaw were doing well and we spent a good bit of time just catching up and trying to keep up with Mallory! We missed Hannah but I did get to talk to her on the phone a bit. She’s busy finishing up work for a couple of childrens books that she’s illustrating. Check out “The Legend of the Schmooney” if you get a chance. Our visit ended in our traditional way with a trip to the Dragons Den for lunch.

We then traveled to Hickory to see Maw Maw and the crew. Tracy stopped by with Austin and Carmen, and Kylie and I were able to go see Mike and his printing business. His office is huge . . . a perk of being the owner I guess. Lana and the kids came up one evening and we caught a quick glimpse of Sonya when we got there, but we missed Debbie and Butch on the trip. We left out on Tuesday around lunch a little worried about the weather, but aside from a few stray drops it was a fairly uneventful trip weather wise.

Christmas morning we spent at home with just the four of us. We read the Christmas story from Luke and exchanged gifts. Santa brought Mallory a slide which she loves. Kylie got a new camera which she loves. That evening we went to Mom and Barry’s for dinner and to exchange gifts. Barry gave mom a Wii Fit which we enjoyed playing though I do take exception to the way it depicted my “Mii” after it calculated my body mass index. Let’s just say it was a “gentle encouragement” to work out a little. Maybe that’s the trick. Mom and Barry gave us a Wii for Christmas, which was much more than they should have spent, but it has already been put to good use. All the stores around town are out of the Wii Fit’s, which provides a great excuse to put off the getting healthy plans…

I’ve posted some pictures below. I’m hoping that at some point before we head back to work I will talk Angie into posting some more pictures to the Web Album.