The Mota Family: January 2014

Friday, January 10, 2014

Happy New Year!

We brought in the new year with friends and family. We started the evening with a fun family dinner date with the Zannikos'. We met Z, Nikki and Charlie at Raffain for a deliciously filling dinner and mocktails for us two preggo girls. After dinner we all went over to Steph and Gene's to watch the Aggies win the Chick-fil-a Bowl, Whoop! And to ring in the new year! Preston always has a blast at Aunt Steph and Uncle Gene's, so he ran his little heart out and absolutely loved the horns, hats and other fun accessories Aunt Steph bought for the party. After the fun count down we did a little karaoke, spent some more time with family and then headed home for some much needed sleep! New Year's Day was relaxing! We slept in, spent the beautiful day at the park with Preston and ordered Black Eyed Pea for dinner takeout so we got our good luck for the year! It was a fun New Years!

We are very excited to see what 2014 has in store for us! We know that we will be moving into our new house and welcoming our sweet baby girl this year! Two things that we are very excited about! We should be moving into the house at the end of January (hopefully before our girlie girl arrives)! 2014 will be the year of Kelsey! We've decided to name our baby girl Kelsey Diane Mota. Kelsey is a name that we both really liked. We had a list of baby girl names and Kelsey kept rising to the top. After lots of back and forth, we decided that Kelsey was the name for our precious new addition! Diane is my mothers middle name. We wanted to have a family name as her middle name like we do with Preston (George after Stephen and his dad) and since my momma is so special, we decided to name Kelsey after her. So, we will be thrilled to introduce the world to Kelsey Diane Mota next month!

Christmas #3 at Nana's-SANTA CAME!!

On Christmas Eve we drove to Mineral Wells to share the most wonderful time of the year with my family. We met mom, Drew, Shelly, Riley, Kaylin and Kinley at moms house which was so beautifully decorated for the holidays. She always does so much to make everything special. It makes it feel like Christmas just walking into the house. Preston was ecstatic to see his big cousins and we were all happy to be together to enjoy a few days with family. We all pepared for the big day on Christmas Eve and then that night we went to a candlelight service at the First United Methodist Church. All of the kids were so good! My favorite part of the service was when the minister said, "What child is this born on Christmas Day?" and Preston said, "It's me momma, he's talking about me!" haha cracked me up! He is so much fun! What a joy to be able to celebrate Christmas and its true meaning with our incredible son! On the drive home we told the kids that they had to go to sleep as soon as we got home, because Santa only comes after all the kids are sleeping. Well, Preston didn't waste any time! He fell asleep in the car and was out for the night! Christmas morning is always fun, and this year was no different with 4 kids anxious to see what Santa had brought. Preston waited patiently in the room until everyone and their cameras were ready for the big reveal. Preston ran out to find that Santa had brought him a "fast racecar"! He was pumped, that is all he'd asked for anytime we saw Santa or wrote Santa letters. He also got a cool beanbag chair, a sleeping bag and some other fun toys from Santa. That Santa is pretty cool! The big kids also got go karts to race around from Santa. It was so much fun! Those kids rode all over the place all day long. Pretty cool! Preston also got some pretty cool things from Nana like a new iPad Air, a fire station and some awesome cowboy boots to name a few of the things. Aunt Shelly and Uncle Drew got Preston a bow and arrow and a cool gogo pillow for his new iPad. I think between the 3 Christmases, our boy got everything he wanted and MORE! He is truly blessed! Steve and I also got a bunch of cool gifts and our sweet baby girl even got some neat gifts. Santa brought Kelsey Diane Mota a personalized bean bag chair, a pink rocking horse and lots of sweet little clothes and blankets. Pretty cool to have Santa visit you before you're even born! =) I think she's going to be pretty blessed too! We spent the rest of the day playing with toys, eating, playing games and then Stephen built a fire to roast marshmallows and make some smores. The kids passed out on their new sleeping bags in Nana's living room and we stayed up late with Drew and Shelly by the fire. It was a wonderful couple of days with family. We were barely able to pack all of our goodies in the car for the drive home. What a special Christmas that will definitely go down in the memory books! Thanks Nana for such a fun Christmas at your house!!

Mom's beautiful house

Wow, look at all those gifts!

Ready for Christmas Eve Service

Anxiously waiting to run out and see what Santa brought!

A Fast Racecar!!

More goodies from Santa for Preston and Kelsey

SO Excited!

Stocking Time

Riley, Kaylin and Kinley digging into their gifts, love them!

Nana getting some special gifts from everyone

Our Little Speed Racer

Having a Blast!

Giving Kaylin a Spin in His New Ride

Getting a ride with Riley Boy

Kaylin Driving Preston around the Driveway

Sweet Kinley getting Sleepy with Momma

Preston LOVES his iPad

Passed Out After a Fun Christmas Day on their New Sleeping Bags!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Christmas #2 at Our Apartment

Since our house is not quite done we got to spend this Christmas in our apartment. It was prior to Christmas day, so Santa didn't come to the apartment, but we did decide to open gifts as a family so we didn't haul all of our gifts to nana's for Christmas day. Having a small little tree and minimal decorations in a little place really makes you appreciate all of the little things about the holiday. This year, we focused a lot on our little growing family and the many blessing that we have! Sometimes its good to get a little perspective! Preston got all kinds of goodies again his favorite was probably his Imaginext Castle! He has had a ball playing with that and all the cool knights and gadgets that go along with it! Steve and I spoiled eachother as usual, here is a pic of us sporting our new sunglasses we got eachother. I love that man! We are truly blessed to have eachother and to not really NEED anything. Life is good! Can't wait to have our sweet girl join us in the festivities next year!

Preston's picture with Santa this year

All of the beautiful Christmas cards we got from friends and family

Little Christmas in the APT

Time for presents!!

Yay for gifts

Preston LOVES the Ninja Turtles

Yay "Just what I wanted"

Favorite Toy from Mom and Dad

Sportin Our Shades

Our 2014 Christmas Card

Christmas #1 with the Mota Family

We were so blessed to be able to have several Christmases this year! Our first was with Stephen's family. We celebrated at Steph and Gene's house and decided that this year we wanted to try to make tamales! We spent the entire day in the kitchen! We had heard it was a process, but boy was it ever! We had a lot of fun! Lots of laughs beginning with the amount of lard needed (sometimes you just really don't want to know what all goes in your food) ;) , then the mixing the masa with our hands and then everyones various methods for spreading the masa and filling the tamales! We had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way! It was definitely good family time! The tamales came out delicious! I think we were pretty successful (I could be a little partial). Not sure if this is a tradition we will continue or not, there seemed to be altering POVs on this. Regardless, we had fun! After all day cooking we opened gifts. We draw names on this side of the family, so it made it fun to see who everyone got. Preston of course gets spoiled at every Christmas, and he got some awesome stuff like a NEW BIKE, a snuggly Elmo, not one but TWO stuffies and some awesome super heros, just to name a few of the items. He is super blessed! After gifts we closed out the evening with karaoke, and learned that our son is a natural with the microphone (watch out world)! It was fun to see him want to be in the spotlight! We all spent the night at Steph and Gene's and woke up together to eat more left overs. All in all it was a very blessed Christmas on this side of the family! Good memories were made as always!

Elf on the Shelf 2014

One of our favorite Christmas traditions we've started in our family is the Elf on the Shelf! For those not aware of the "Elf" essentially Santa sends an elf that you get to name and everyday that elf appears in new locations, sometimes with a gift and is always on a mission to report back to Santa each night to update on the progress of Preston. Last year we had Jingles and this year, we had Bell the Elf come to stay with us. She was so much fun! Always had fun places to find her and brought a lot of neat treats for Preston throughout the month. Really gave us something to be excited about each day leading up to Christmas! Can't wait to have Bell back next year, who knows maybe we'll get lucky with 2 kiddos and get Jingles and Bell back!! Its a super fun tradition! Here are some of the fun ways Bell showed up at our apartment this year.