christmas with the finley's

each year we start our christmas on the night before christmas eve with the finley side of the family. we go over to mimi and pawpaw finley's house and join pawpaw jerry, joy, scott and gavin for dinner. this year nina and papa even came. it is always such a good time.

you can always find molly driving the pets crazy. she can't help herself. she has to hug and kiss any animal around.






pawpaw got an auburn football autographed by gene chizik.


the adults played dirty santa for the first time this year. fun times!


mimi opens her gift.


pawpaw jerry opens his gift.


papa likes his gift.... just wait papa, it might be taken away!


daddy picks a gift after his under armor boggin was stolen by gavin.


nina unwraps her gift.


thanks everyone for such a wonderful christmas! we love spending time with the finley side of the family. off to nina and papa's tomorrow night!

cheaha visit

everytime we come over a small hill we call greenbriar mt., you can see part of the appalachain mts. duke asks all of the time, "when can we go to the top of those mountains?" so we decided to take him there. cheaha mt. is the highest point in alabama and we can see it as we top the hill on greenbriar.
he was so excited to know that he was going to the top of that mountain that he can see off in the distance everyday.
here are the pics of our visit.

Bald Rock- duke can't be serious, as usual.

ohhhhhh! my knees were weak as they sat here. chad was right behind them holding their shirts.

they wanted to sit in the tree. it was kind of like sitting on a horse.

during the walk back to the car, molly was tired of walking and needed a ride from daddy.

i don't know why we don't come here more often. so peaceful and beautiful!

old baker farm

so now that duke has begun kindergarten, the time came for his first field trip. luckily, i am a kindergarten teacher at his school, so i got to be in on the decision of where we would go this year. we narrowed it down to two ideas and gave duke the choice~ the pumpkin patch or the christmas tree farm. duke chose the pumpkin patch and what a good choice it was.

nina came along to chaperone him with his class, although i was there. it was nice because i got to take pics of them and nina took pics of him. we stopped first to see the calfs get fed. i volunteered to feed one..... how sweet!

once we left there, it was on to the hayride to the pumpkin patch. it was muddy and there were large mud puddles, but of course the tractors plowed right through.

duke chose a pumpkin for himself and then he also chose one for molly. how sweet!

lunch time was up in the hayloft, which was really neat.

we finished up with a walk through the petting zoo and by gathering some cotton from the cotton field. old baker farm was really nice and i was glad to take the kindergarten classes there. chad, I, dot and mic have been taking the kids there since duke's first fall. it is a really nice farm and we always enjoy it!