Crawford Family: 2012

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Merry Christmas........

"Uncle" Frank started off the fun giving his Godson a ginormous rice crispy treat (really the gift was an itunes card) that Mason thought was sooo cool!

Christmas Eve at my dad's house with his side of the family. Here he is with his 3 brothers.

Here is the whole gang minus Jason's family and my cousin Jonathan. That's a LOT of people!

Granny reading "Mater Saves Christmas" has become a Christmas Eve tradition.

The one time the "powers" of our elf, "Shag" were lifted so each of the kids could hug him and say goodbye until next December!

It is so genuine and sweet how they love touching and hugging him.

Even at 7, Mason is still believing. Not sure how much longer we have with him??

We couldn't forget to put out the reindeer food so Santa could find our house!

Here they are on Christmas morning, ready to race downstairs!

Once everything is set out, it never seems as much as you thought it would be!

They each got an itouch from Santa, in hopes that they would stop asking for our phones all day everyday. Needless to say they were sooo excited!

They even came loaded with songs and games they liked!

One of the many princess toys Celie got.

Celie loved another princess castle she got!

Buie is going to need help putting that together.

She could take a few tips on "What makes a Princess"!

Crawford and Buie comparing their new toys.

Utter chaos for about 5 minutes while they rip open every gift in Grandmas house!

One of my favorite sites at my Granny's house is ALL the stocking they have an their fireplace.

Celie helping Great Granny open her gifts.

Not sure why we got them any gifts other than the itouch!

My granny and Granddaddy!

Christmas at Granny's house a few days later. Walker was loving all the gifts stacked on top of him.

Buie and Granny sharing some kind of secret.

This could make a great Apple commercial!

Live Nativity at Sardis UMC

My children were fortunate enough to all be able to participate in the live nativity at my dad's church.

Celie is the tiny angel in front. Boy do we need to borrow this costume!

Mason and Buie, back left each had an animal they were in charge of.

Mason takes his job very seriously.

If only she acting like one every day!

She was enamored with the baby Jesus. She "looks" so sweet and innocent!

Our 1st Wrestling Tournament!

Well, I thought I would be cut out for being a wrestlers mom having grown up watching both of my brothers wrestle for 6 years each, but I now have doubts about myself. I knew it was a tough sport (for the kid) but man is it gut wrenching for the parents. I look at my parents each day and wonder how they sat through all of that and from what I could see not a tear in their eye. My sister in law tried to warn me, but I thought oh, I can handle that, how bad could it be? Well, when you send your baby out on that mat with no one out there to help them (and really no clue what the goal was) and hope that they knew what to do, your heart sinks to a place I didn't know existed. It was the biggest roller coaster ride of emotions I had ever been on.

Background: this was a "beginner" tournament and Mason and Buie had only been wrestling for all of maybe 8 practices and didn't know much more than shoot, sprawl, and how to get out of referee's position. So, here we as most wonderful parents would do, sign our boys up for a tournament at Kell High School! Thank God my dad was there to help "coach"/warm up/console my boys, because I was worthless. Chris did the best he could given that he had no clue what was going on either.

So here goes Mason's first match.

Well, he did awesome.

He did everything he was taught and did it well.

And he ended up winning his first match

Practicing with Grandpa in between matches

Buie's all smiles while he warms up with Grandpa!

Here Buie is in his first match and he won as well.

Well, this is where we should have probably gone home and felt good about ourselves!

Mason ended up doing very well his second match, but the kid pinned him in the 3rd round.

His third match he ended up winning thanks to the time running out and controlled most of the match.

Here Buie is in his second match. This kid ended up winning the whole tournament and pinned every kid except Buie. Buie did awesome though! He had a bye his next match and then he had the very last match of the tournament. So it's his turn to go and Buie refuses to go out there, starts crying and won't let Chris put his head gear on. His coach, who is great, does not want to force him to go out there if he does not want him to, but Chris and I were dying and were trying to guilt/make him go out there and at least try. Come to find out, the kid he was to wrestle, had NOT won a single match that day and Buie gave him his only win of the day. Since then we have had a LOT of talks about quitting and what that means.

Mason on the other hand won2 and lost 2 (his last match he got pinned in 16 seconds) and got a medal and was soooo proud of his medal.

Stay tuned for our next tournament coming up this weekend! I think I will need some anxiety medicine for the next one.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Thanksgiving 2012

Cottonham Plantation

We had a wonderful trip for Thanksgiving (and Grandmas Birthday) down at Cottonham. The weather was better than we could have asked for and for the first time in I can't remember how long, my kids were not sick. (Caddie was, but not mine) The boys got to go hunting, Celie got to "cook" with dirt and things, they all swung on the tire swing and played on the jumpy slide. A bonus this year was going to see a bunch of donkey.