Wiggains Christmas

For the Thanksgiving Holidays this year my family traveled to San Antonio. Why you might ask? My sister-in-law Kelly is 8 months pregnant and lives near there. Their house isn't large enough to accommodate all of us so my parents found a great house to rent. It was great. The house had 5 bedrooms (all with their own TV) so we all had our own space. My parents and my brother Mitch, Katie and Jacey arrived on Monday. My other brother Tyler, Kelly and Keynan arrived Tuesday evening. We traveled to Austin Tuesday evening to stay with Leland's aunt Brenda and arrived in San Antonio Wednesday at lunch. We had great food and great fun. It would have been more fun if my kids weren't sick and could have possibly attempted the cold weather, but such is life. Flexibility is a must when kids are around.

Kelly's chicken and dumplings. There are amazing. We started the tradition last year that each family cooks a meal when we are together. Kelly did dumplings that year and we all request it ever since. Katie makes lasagna and cheesecake. We make chicken strips with all the fixins. Mom is in charge of the turkey/ham dinner.

Mom is also in charge of pies. We didn't have a rolling pin at the house so she had to be creative making the crust. The apple pie looked amazing though.

It was a little rough though. Reese finally caught the cold we have all been passing around for over a month now. She definitely had it the worst though. Friday she was starting the miserable look phase. Friday night she ran a temp of 101 most of the night. We decided we needed to head on home on Saturday. Glad we did because she ran 103 all Saturday night and into Sunday. She is past the fever stage now, but still isn't back to herself. Hopefully soon.

Raylee also had a tough couple of days. She slammed her thumb into the dryer taking off a huge chunk of skin. She has had a band-aid since. Curious though - it is her sucking thumb. We are wondering if this is going to kick the habit. I'm thinking of keeping a band-aid on longer than really needed just to see if it will work. The first night it was like withdrawals but she hasn't really noticed since. We'll see. Raylee also hit her head really hard on the corner of the table causing a big goose egg. But true to Raylee form, she bounced back from both events and still had a good time.

Ryland did awesome this trip. He is the only older cousin but he handled it well. Ryland is 5; Raylee is 24 months; Keynan is 15 months; Reese is almost 6 months; Jacey is 3 months; "Buster" is due in January. Yes, we are a baby factory lately - 5 kids in 26 months. Ryland did great though. He and his uncle Mitch played the Wii most of the time. He loved that.

We had our Chirstmas on Friday morning. Everyone came out quite well. The kids all got plenty of new clothes and toys thanks to PaPa and Grandma. It was great fun.

I brought our first Christmas tree - a 4 footer. We girls had fun decorating such a small tree.

A long tradition in our family is a Christmas Eve gift of pajamas. We attempted to get the cousins picture, but true to kids, it was a zoo. I'm not sure if we should feel sorry for Jacey because she was so mad or Ryland because he had to hold her. It was fun though.

Raylee and Keynan are quite the duo. They are just 9 months apart in age and played so well together. I think they both taught some bad tricks to each other.

We had them watching a Baby Einstein movie. We later found them jumping on the bed having a grand old time.