Christmas Eve and Day in SA

On the morning of the 24th we woke up and headed for SA.  First stop, the Roper's house!

We spent some time there visiting with everyone and trying out the new XBox Kinnect before lunch.  Matt went with David and I took Ashley to Habanero's.  We always love getting to see the Roper family and the kids always make us laugh!  You guys are a wonderful blessing to us and we are so thankful to have you all in our lives.

After lunch and some afternoon relaxing, we met this gang at AHUMC for church.

From there we headed to Aunt Michelle and Uncle Ron's house for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner!  Always delicious.  I probably ate the equivalent of an entire jar of pickles....

Sunday morning, Christmas Day, we went over to mom's house for brunch!  She made her soon to become a tradition casserole!

After leaving mom's we stopped by the O'havers to see the newly wed O'havers for a brief "hello and Merry Christmas."  We then continued our Green Spring Valley tour by skipping over to Cagney's mom's apartment to see him and his family!  Always fun to catch up with them too!

We then rushed home to throw together some cornbread (which turned out to be undercooked-my fault) and my favorite, green bean casserole (Martha did an excellent job on that one).

We then left this cutied (Penny in her new sweater I bought her for Christmas) to go over to Uncle Frank and Dula's house for another amazing meal! 

 The prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes were to die for!  We also got to skype with Derek and Michelle, and see the girls running around and playing with their new toys, and Kelly and Brett!

Matt got a gun tutorial from Beans since we are in the market.

All in all, it was a great Christmas with wonderful family!

Christmas 2011-at home

So before we left for SA we opened presents at home.  Our trip to Mexico earlier in December was really our gift to each other, but since we still wanted to be able to have something to open we each ended up buying the other some DVDs!  Matt also got us gas logs for the fire place!  He proceeded to get them all set up for us that night!  Andy and Ashley came over and Andy helped!

Here are the stages...

empty fire place...open box....cold house

voila!  fire!  pretty quick phases cause they are smart guys!

logs in place...beautiful, warm living room!

And we have had a fire most night since we've been back now!  Love it!  Sweet surprise from my love!

Christmas Party at the Alexander's

December 17th we went to a Stress Christmas party at the Alexander's new pad!  We had such a good time with some of Matt's co workers and the new house is beautiful!

Here are some pictures form the two main events....gingerbread house decorating contest and white elephant gift exchange!

 Below is Matt's team's house  which won the "Bob Wink" award for creativity!

 We won this "A"shaped pillow, which is actually pretty comfortable!

Stress Christmas Party

Here is our unofficial picture from last night's Stress Christmas party.  There is of course the formal picture to come later.  We had a nice time visitng and we were even seated at the president's table!

I had to include this picture since it is the only one where my new shoes can be seen!

First Christmas Party of the season!

CPA license status.....

Just wanted to share an email I just received, apparently 9 minutes ago......

John G. Kays JKays@tsbpa.state.tx.us	8:41 AM (9 minutes ago)
to me

Rachel:

 

We are okaying you for the license now. 

 

Thanks,

 

John Kays

Inspector

Texas State Board Of Public Accountancy

jkays@mail.tsbpa.state.tx.us

Should get my official letter/certificate, however they do it very soon!!!

Rachel R. Sanders, CPA........looks pretty good!

We got a rug!

See our new living room rug!  Much preparation went into finding this one! Thank you to Mary Frances Bowling for your help picking out the perfect rug!

 Its huge!

My sweet hubby vaccumming the new rug!

 We love it!  Its a perfect fit!

Mexico!!! December 2nd-6th, 2011

This is a terribly short summary of what our vacation, as most of you know I take a TON of pictures, but I had to upload one by one, so for now, this is what you get! :)

Our tickets for the ride there!

On the plane

um, wow!  The view from our SECOND FLOOR terrace, that's right!

Our room, the bottom floor :)

ready to head to the beach

One of the activities we did was a cooking class with our new friend Carolina.  Matt was volunteered to help mix the guacamole, add in the "Mexican flavor" as Carolina put it!

The trip was filled with lots of relaxing....

Before our hibachi dinner, which was soooo good!

we of course also spend a lot of time out at the beach playing volleyball, laying around and reading

we also went for a ride on the "Hobie Cat" catamaran which was a blast!

One afternoon we went on a bike tour of the area with our friend Edwin.  We saw the golf course in the area and went up in an observation tower where we could see Playa Mujeres.  We saw the marina and the other hotels in the area; there really aren't many, there was so much green space! Unfortunately, Edwin told us that might not be the case in a few years as they are already starting to develop the area.

after the bike tour we tried our hand at tennis...as a first for both of us we did alright

That night we had lobster for dinner!  We then went back to the room to get Matt's glasses and laid down for a bit...and then fell asleep and didn't wake up until the next morning :)

The next morning we had a huge breakfast at the buffet.

After breakfast we went on my first ever jet ski ride!  Matt drove for a little while, then let me give it a try!

Monday with our friends Carolina and Ediwn.

Before last night's dinner.  We figured out how to work the "no reservations" thing, order room service appetizers then head down for dinner later in the night!  Done!

After that, we tried escargot at the French restaurant and had steak for dinner.  YUM!

This morning, before heading out...after trying to do the scuba tutorial one more time, we went around and took some more pictures of our favorite spots.  Like these bed swings by the pool!  Perfect for relaxing with a great book!

Between the pool and the beach, it doesn't get better than this!

At the airport, of course we had to get some ice cream!

and this is what we came back to....grey skies and traffic.  Thankful we had the time to get away, even if it was just for a bit!