The Shumate Family - Ronnie, Amy, Chase and Dixie!

Chase and his cousin like to pretend they are in a band. We gave Jr an electric guitar for Christmas and he loves it. Here they are this afternoon playing band... and of course Playstation with the big kids.. Playing Playstation... Ronnie, Chase, Jr and Jeff.

As you can see, Santa dropped off way too much stuff at our house! Chase is one lucky boy... Love my LV bag... This McDonald's Drive Thru play kitchen was a huge hit. Thanks Santa... Christmas Eve at our house. Our annual Christmas Eve dinner and we open gifts with the Shumate side of the family. Chase with his cousins, John, Kam, Chase and Jr....

Chase has refused time and time again to see Santa. We were up at Yankee Candle on Sunday morning and had NO idea he'd actually sit in his lap... we weren't prepared with a cute Christmas outfit, but the pictures were still just as adorable. Here are some of our favorites.

These houses are our Advent Calendar. Each house has windows that open and doors that open so you can hid little treats in there. We count down the days until Christmas this way! I'm proud of my porch this year. I worked really hard on this garland wrapping it with ribbon and adding ball ornaments to it. Getting ready for the Shumate family Christmas party. We had a ton of fun. Each year we play the Yankee Swap game and the gifts are always awesome! We had a blast as always and look forward to next years party...

We had a great Thanksgiving in Myrtle Beach this past weekend. Here's some of our pictures. Chase was dancing up a storm at Senor Frogs....which is kind of odd to think about him dancing at Senor Frogs... I remember when Ronnie and I were in CanCun on our honeymoon and we danced our butts off at Senor Frogs! My how time goes by so quickly and things change.. We also visited Ripley's Aquarium and Alligator Adventure. We stayed in an amazing hotel, Dunes Village Resort. We cannot wait to go back this summer... adults only next time!

Here are some pictures that I took Thursday morning of the creek that's quickly rising in our backyard. Normally you have to hike through the woods in our backyard to get to the creek... today I can stand on my back porch and see it and it's even clearer from the window in Chase's room. Thankfully it didn't get past the fence on our backyard. Now we are left with a HUGE mess to clean up in our backyard and the back of our house is covered with leaves.

Chase's first Monster Truck ride...