Cynthia, Erica and Jordan all came together and helped ol' Dad put up the tree. Really, I was more or less useless and tried my best to keep out of the way. Here's Erica placing the sparkly aluminum garland around the tree. Kevin, also pictured, was clearly hanging the Christmas bulbs. At the end, Jordan got to place the star at the top of the tree. Cynthia, not pictured, probably did most of the work. Unfortunately, she also took the pictures and forgot to take one of herself.

Decorating the Christmas tree was always Connie's job because she had that magical touch that made the tree look better than any of us could accomplish. But apparently some of that rubbed off on the kids, because they did a wonderful job following in her footsteps. Now we just had to start wrapping the presents to put under the tree.

The next thing we worked on was a Gingerbread House. I bought a kit from the store and Jordan and I did our best to put it together. We were actually doing fairly good when about half way through, everything started falling apart. The shingles on the roof started sliding down and then all four walls collapsed on themselves. What we were left with was a pile of gingerbread sheets with scattered icing and candy on them. Here is the picture and, no, it didn't look anything like the picture on the front of the box. That did not stop us from doing the next best thing... we started eating the gingerbread house. That's really what it is for anyway, isn't it???

We started the evening by heading to Pappadeaux's restaurant in San Antonio. Cynthia, Jordan and Kevin got there first and the rest of us crammed into Erica's car. We had to catch up quickly because Cynthia was already a couple of drinks ahead of us by the time we arrived. Jordan was drinking a virgin Pina Colada and Kevin was loading up with yogurt covered pretzels! Then we headed home for some more drinks, christmas music and, of course, presents. Jordan (by tradition) handed out the presents. The rest of the night was a free-for-all as everyone ripped open their presents -- some expected, and some, like this computer game Star Wars helmet, were a huge surprise! The kids all got shirts to wear for the upcoming Katy Perry Concert.