SAFUN

Jason and I spent our first Christmas together this year. He is from Corpus Christi where his parents reside and my family lives here in San Antonio where my family resides.The past 4 years we have always separated our holidays. This is our first year married and we had to make some normal married couple decisions. We stayed in San Antonio for Thanksgiving and went to Corpus for Christmas.
I was very excited to spend our Christmas in Corpus with Jason’s family. Their traditional Christmas is midnight mass, big breakfast while watching the Christmas parade on TV, gift opening extravaganza, watching Christmas movies, sleeping, cooking, big Christmas dinner and then topped with a drive to see Christmas lights.
It was a very relaxing and comforting. I felt right at home.
For dinner, we had a stuffed TurkDucken which was Turkey stuffed with Duck, Chicken and cornmeal stuffing. It was Cajun spiced. Delicious! Of course, I brought the sweets. I love to bake and Jason’s parents love my sweet treats.
There were so many awesome gifts but out of everything, I have to rate 2 of my favorites. Chris (Jason’s brother) is an aquatic animal enthusiast and Jason’s mom is a sewing enthusiast. So what does that give you? Well, Jason’s mother made a beautiful hand made quilt with colorful fish on one side and blue sharks on the other side. Wow! It was huge too! (Chris is 6’4) It was so awesome! Don’t be surprised Chris if it goes missing
And then I received the FLIP video from my husband. I have been wanting one so bad. We have been giving them away as a promotion at ServerBeach and PEER 1 and I was like, hmm, I have to have one. It is perfect for video blogging. There were so many other cool gifts but those topped it off.
I had a wonderful Christmas. Thank you Familia Bartels!

ServerBeach, a PEER 1 Company, wishes you a very happy holiday season. We are a very humorous and sarcastic crew, all in good fun though.

Our good friends , April and Ruben, are spending their Christmas in New Mexico this year where Ruben’s parents live. It is their son, Byron’s, very first Christmas. They left today so we insisted on giving Byron his Christmas gift before they left. That means we would be giving him his first Christmas present, fun!
We all met up for lunch. We were all ready to see him go crazy with the paper. We got him the cutest little outfit from The Children’s Place. I love that place (even though I have no children). We got him a sweater, pants and matching hat and gloves! We wanted him to be ready for the cold weather in New Mexico. Byron could care less about that. We just wanted to see him tear the paper. It’s funny because we had to start it off for him. He began tearing but as we cheered him on, he decided that he didn’t want to do it anymore. He was more intrigued by the hanging light and the drinks on the table. Children are so funny. The more you tell them to do something, the less they want to do it and the more they want to do something that they aren’t suppose to be doing.
It was still lots of fun and he had no idea what was going on.
Ruben, April, Byron and their 2 dogs took off today for a long road trip to New Mexico. We wish them safe travels!

Give me my present!!

Open it!!

Picture perfect family!!

My brother attends Sunshine Cottage. Sunshine is a school for the deaf located her in San Antonio, Texas. It holds grades from preschool up to 5th grade. Sunshine is unique because they do not teach their children sign language. They have a mainstream program where classes consist of half hearing children and half hearing impaired children.

Sunshine Cottage knows that children with hearing loss can be an active part of the hearing world. We teach children with mild to profound hearing loss to communicate naturally and effectively using intelligible speech and pleasant-sounding voices, without the use of sign language.

Every year, they hold a very impressive themed Christmas Play. It is a grand production that involves every single child in every grade level. This year the theme was Charlie Brown. It was featured on San Antonio Living. 

Jason and I wanted to do our first family photo and send it out as holiday cards. We gave the dogs a bath, got them nice sweaters. It was a beautiful sunny day. Perfect photo weather (well, a bit too sunny). But you get my point. Everything was perfect, or at least we thought. For some reason, Sierra (the white dog) got angry at Topaz (the brindle dog). They usually get along but once and while, when Jason and I are around, they get competitive. Topaz is the alpha dog, we have had her the longest and she is the oldest. Sierra, still a puppy, does not understand. I don’t think she understands dog rules in general. Anyhow, the photo did not turn out so perfect, as you can see. However, it is a good photo. Sometimes things don’t go as you please but it’s the captured moment that tells a story you will cherish forever.