Christmas 2009

We spent Christmas at Stephen & Jamie's home in Waco this year. It was so much fun because my mom came over from Tyler, my sister's family came from Marshall, and my aunt and uncle came down from Dallas. It was the first time in about five years that my family had all been together for Christmas! It was also really special because of all the kiddos we had at the house!

It was a pleasant treat that it actually snowed on Christmas Eve, a fairly rare occurrence for Waco! Here is Steph and me staying warm outside by sharing a coat.



And here are pics of Stephen and Jamie, and Stephen and my mom and me.





Stephen's boys, Will and James, really enjoyed playing out in the snow. For them, it was probably a nice reminder of winter in Albuquerque.





Here is Steph and me in the kitchen.



Stephany made her becoming-famous mint-chocolate cupcakes! She had Will and James help her out, which they thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, they enjoy any occasion to wear their aprons and help in the kitchen.









Another special thing about this Christmas was that we made the Christmas cookies that my dad used to make each year. It was a family tradition for us to frost several batches of the sugar cookies that my dad would make. We would always have lots of cookies left over for days after Christmas, and we would also send some home with friends and take them to the workers of the local service station in Noonday (the small town where I grew up). It was such a fun memory for all of us, sitting around the dining room table decorating Christmas cookies together. We hadn't done this in quite a long time, and it was fun renewing the tradition in honor of my dad.

Here are some pics of my brother and me making the cookie dough on Christmas Eve. The dough chilled through the night, and then we baked the cookies on Christmas, in time for everyone to decorate them that afternoon after lunch.







Here we are rolling out the batter and cutting out the cookies.





The trick for successful cutting is definitely to use a lot of flour on the cutters.



Perfect.



And...that's my brother.



And these are the delicious cookies baking in the oven!



My mom laying the cookies out to cool on the table.



Pretty awesome. And they even turned out really good on the first try! We were pleased.



Once Tish and Joey arrived from Marshall on Christmas day, we had double the kids in the house! Steph and I enjoyed some fun play-time with the kids in the play room. Here's Hart, Tish's youngest, who turned two on December 27. We also threw Hart a birthday party during our time in Waco, which was fun.





Here was the delicious lunch spread! Everybody brought something, so it was a fun collaborative effort.



And here's Miss Macy Lou enjoying a Christmas cookie.



Here are Tish and Sophie, the oldest of the cousins. In addition to making her really tasty cranberry sauce, Sophie also gave out ornaments that she had made in her ceramics class this year.



Here's Gran enjoying some jack-in-the-box fun with Hart. He probably could have sat there with her for an hour doing this! It was really cute.





Here's us on the couch enjoying time with the family.



And here's Gran enjoying time with the kiddos!







Anne (my dad's sister) shows James and Owen how to work the new Bat-copter as Andrew, her husband, observes (for future reference, no doubt).



Anne also provided some toy ray guns for the young guys, which proved to be quite fun.



I of course obtained one of the guns immediately and proceeded to attack Owen. Here's a still from some raw footage. Owen was good, but he suffered some serious fire here, completely exposed while sitting on the couch.



Hart, stop admiring the gun and take cover! Owen takes no prisoners!



Here's me using Hart as my human shield. I'm not sure that Owen understood the concept. Sorry, Hart.



Wow, why can't every day be like this?? Actually, we all know why, but man, that was some good dessert! At top is the Hudson-famous blueberry banana cream pie. At bottom left is my sister's delicious cheeseball, which she has been making since she was about Sophie's age. At bottom is a cake version of Stephany's mint-chocolate cupcakes that she made (it was as fantastic as the cupcakes!).



All the boys lined up in the kitchen - this totally wasn't even directed, they just happened to line up red-blue-red-blue like that.



Gran with all her grandchildren!



Including the one on the way!



After lunch, Tish and Stephen made up the frosting for decorating the Christmas cookies!







Mmmmmm...so good....



We all really enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies again.







The kids joined in too! I think Owen ate all the ones he decorated. That's definitely part of the fun of it though!











After decorating cookies, Tish and I played guitar together in Stephen's office. She pulled up the tablature to some Christmas songs online, which was fun.



Our music attracted children.







Here is Gran with some very asleep Hudson boys.



And here's a shot of the beautiful women, all decked out coincidentally in purple and maroon. Beautiful indeed.



This was a really special and very fun Christmas for us! It was great getting to spend an early holiday with our family in Albuquerque and celebrate early with the Sheltons and then be able to come down to Waco to be with family there. We were blessed to enjoy such good time with our families.

We hope you all are well and enjoyed the holiday.

Much love,
Nathan & Stephany