Christmas Week - Part Two, Townsend Style

This year the Mark Townsend part of the Townsend clan stayed at the beautiful La Quinta in McAllen while we were in the Valley. 

We opened all our gifts in one of our hotel rooms before we headed to Grandma & Grandpa's house for Christmas Eve festivities.  It was crammed but fun!

Presents everywhere!

Sweet shorts Travis!  Those are some of Mark's old swimming shorts that Cindy put in Travis's box to add weight!  It was funny :)

Austin with his "saw horse" or "jaw horse", not sure what the thing is or what it's called, all I know is that it's heavy and it's some kind of tool.  But when you're flying home you can't exactly take it on the plane so Cindy got Austin a saw and a plastic horse to explain it to him until he gets the real one this weekend!

Rach with the Pioneer Woman cookbook we got her!  I love that cookbook!  I got one from my parents for Christmas too.  :)

Mark with the Mayan rubbing picture that Austin got him in Palenque, MX this summer.  He likes it as you can see from the face he's making! 

Christmas Eve we spent at Grandma & Grandpa's house.  There were 42 of us there!!!  All of the Townsend's were there except Patrick who is in Iraq serving our country.  He was missed and hopefully next year everyone will be able to be together!  

Lots of presents under the beautiful tree!

Elizabeth, Drew, Caroline, me, & Rachel hanging out

The Mark Townsend crew!  He's one of NINE brothers & sisters!! 

This year Greg rented an entire room for the week for the garage to make more room for everyone!  We called it The Lounge.  It was awesome.  Here is Rach "lounging" in it.  Ha!

Seriously, a huge makeover, it looked like an ordinary garage just a few days earlier.

Elizabeth, Rach & me getting our "best angle"!  ;)

Cindy & Mark

Little fairy Gracie. She was so funny with that wand. Elizabeth told her she had to be nice and tap people with it not hit them. So, Gracie went to her Daddy and hit him with the wand while saying "tap tap tap!" Hey, she listened! ;) It was hilarious.

Every year we have a gift exchange where each couple brings one regular gift and one white elephant gift.  David got this little Mexican window hanging that looked better suctioned to his head!  Nice look David!  Ha!

Paul got the penguin.  It actually got stolen from him!  So funny.

Drew got an awesome snake wine holder.  I mean, who WOULDN'T want that?!?!  ;)

Austin got a "NYE Party in a Box" that Elizabeth brought.  This was funny because a few years ago Austin showed up at Elizabeth's place with a trunk full of party supplies and said he brought a "party in a box"!

Every year we take a big group picture of the entire family.  This year for some reason we didn't get it.  :(  I always love taking that picture each year because it's just so crazy to me that so many of us get together every year in one house and it doesn't even seem too crowded!  So, just to give you an idea of what it looks like, here is a pic from last year, just with less people than this year.  Everyone looks so different now!

 

Thank you Townsend family for making it such a great trip!  We love coming to visit each year!