It’s the end of 2014, friends. We’re doing our “end of year” wrap up work here in the office, editing the final collections for our December weddings, and making our lists of goals for 2014. Oh, and prepping amazing posts full of all the “Best of 2013” images… the big contest will launch NEXT Monday!

At the end of this week, we’ll be sharing a gorgeous bride & groom session, so we hope you’ll come back to see that on Friday. But in the meantime, we’re using the downtime here on the blog to share a little glimpse into the McG family’s Christmas. We had a really wonderful low-key time with family, and while we tried not to spend the entire holiday behind a camera, we DID capture several images that we know we’ll cherish forever. We can’t believe how much more fun we have at Christmas with our kids each passing season… they’re truly the best part of a holiday. 🙂

As usual, if you’re not interested in personal posts, it won’t hurt our feelings if you skip right over this blog. But if you DO like pictures of adorable kids opening Christmas presents, or grownups playing with Nerf Guns… well, then scroll to your heart’s content!

Christmas Eve is always spent at my grandparents’ house, not too far from our own home. We always attend the service at church, then have dinner before the kids open the presents from their Great-Grandparents. This year, they managed to convince the grandparents that presents needed to come BEFORE dinner. 🙂

What good is it to make cookies for Santa if you can’t eat some of the dough first??

Christmas morning!! They actually slept until 7:45, which was a complete miracle. 🙂

The kids found “snow” footprints on our porch, and hollered “THANK YOU SANTA!!!” at the sunrise.  Awwww… exploding heart!!

Dorothy just couldn’t wait another SECOND to put on her new Merida nightgown.

Jack is the most animated gift receiver I’ve ever known. He’s such a great kid.

At my parents, the “big kids” all got superhero snuggies. BEST.

Drum roll, please, for my new favorite Christmas picture of all time…

On the 27th, we planned a Christmas party with our group of friends… 10 of us, from all over Texas and from Louisiana, too! The “official” Christmas party was later in the evening and there aren’t any bloggy pictures of that, but I’ve GOT to share what happened in the afternoon.

See, the 27th was also our friend Jeremy’s 30th birthday, so we figured out a way to surprise him with a unique little birthday celebration in addition to the Christmas party. We invited Jeremy & Christy to come to the studio to “tour it”, since they haven’t seen it before. And when they pulled up the driveway, we (Mack and I, the Bergs, and the Bechtels) shot them up in EPIC nerf war fashion!!

We were so glad our friend Caty, of CatyDear photography, could come out for a couple hours to get some pictures of this super fun time. I will cherish these pictures of our awesome friends my entire life.

While we waited for Jeremy & Christy to arrive, we decided we needed a Resevoir Dogs portrait. 🙂

Then we got the signal, and everyone took their places!

WARRRRRR!

This is my new favorite picture of Meg & I, for SURE.

Mack had a custom flask made for Jeremy… their bromance is pretty inspiring. 🙂

I need to find a frame worthy of this awesome group photo!!

WolfPack, we love you!! Here’s to another year of wonderful adventures together.

Mack and I don’t have any big New Year’s Eve plans… in fact, we’ll most likely be asleep before midnight. But we DID have time to talk & breathe deeply & have our own personal celebration of another trip around the sun yesterday. We spent some time at Turner Falls in Oklahoma for a session, and took a few hours extra to explore on our own (which we love to do whenever possible). There are few things more soothing to the soul than a beautiful view, and the sound of wind in crackly leaves.

Gorgeous, right?? Don’t forget to come back and see Friday’s blog post, which pairs this beautiful scenery with beautiful people, for exponentially greater eyeball goodness!!

Happy New Year, friends. 2013 has been one for the record books, to be sure. We can’t wait to see what 2014 has in store for us, and we hope it’s ok with y’all if we keep sharing it here. 🙂