Christmas is Coming,

Our house is getting FAT.

The holiday has officially begun. The house is full with the whole Relle Clan here, gifts to give, and all the gifts that were gotten so far.

We have some major cleaning up to do in order to fit all that I'm sure Jack is going to be getting next week when we head home for Christmas.

Nick and I both experienced a whole new holiday time this December in McKinney. There was a Christmas tree in the entry way, the PTA wrapped Christmas gifts for teachers, and it was a Christmas Party, not a "Winter Party". Oh, and there was holiday music playing in the halls as you walked out of your room. I did my same lessons from Richardson (with less since some of it was too advanced for First Grade) so we covered Hanakkah, Kwanzaa, Los Posados, and went all out for Christmas.....including pictures with Santa, hand print Santa, and writing letters to Santa Claus...quit different but fun too. And so were the gifts....Nick got more than all his years combined and I didn't do too bad myself. Below are a few of our favorites.

Mr. Stortz's (a First Grade teammate) wife made this wood plaque for us. How cool is that? We wanted something similar when I did my Uppercase Living but it didn't make the cut over Jack's items. We love it!
Kathryn, a LSU Tiger fan in my class, gave me this teacher bag and the two cute koozies here with drinks. Plus they gave Nick a gift card for dinner and offered to babysit....Guess us Tigers have to look out for each other in the Big D.
And the administration gave us each McGowen Maverick's cooler bags with this year's theme logo on it...you know for Nick's 6 pack of Coca-Cola and my 6 pack of forget about work for the holiday drinks. I can't wait to plan some outings while we are off and use it to carry our loot.

And on top of many, many other gifts we got over $145 in gift cards to various places around town. It feels good to know that all the hours of work we put into helping their children is appreciated.