Christmas 2012

The holidays are done.

The decorations are getting put back into their boxes (except at our house - hmm, maybe that will happen this weekend).

And I'm just now blogging about it.

I'm soooooo last year.

Seriously, I just made a list (yes, because that's what I do - I make lists) of blog posts that I need to write...and there are a ton of them, so let's hope that being back in our "usual" routine will help me get them written.

So, onto Christmas...

We had a great Christmas this year.  It was super busy with most of our time spent at different family members' houses.  When we get all together there are 13 people on my side and 19 on Tim's side.  That's a lot of people.  But we love them, so it's not bad.

Christmas Eve is always held at Tim's cousin's house.  This year's menu was homemade Italian - homemade lasagna, baked spaghetti and chicken alfredo.  YUM!!!  Then every dessert you could possibly think of.  The adults all exchange names and we have a good time trying to make our "chain" as long as we can.  You know the chain, right?  The number of people who don't just have each other's names.  Anyway, I got some great blue and green kitchen towels and dishcloths.  I love them!

On to Christmas morning.

Which started at 5:15 AM at our house.

Yes, you read that right.  Our kids are now at the age where they wake up super early, and are super excited on Christmas day.  And they wake the rest of us up that early.  I do enjoy this age and this stage.  But I think I will enjoy the sleeping a little later, teenage stage too.

I would say all that happened in minutes, but really we took turns opening gifts and the kids were very patient.  It took about an hour to open all our gifts.  Notice the left side of the picture...Julie put all her gifts in a nice neat little rectangle.  The right side all belongs to David - stuff everywhere - just like you'd expect from a 7-year-old boy.

Julie's pile - World atlas, US atlas, cookbook, some shirts, gloves, games, Loopz game.  Her "big" Santa gift is a keyboard with headphones.

David's pile - Legos, legos and more legos.  Lego books, oh and an Ironman and Wolverine thrown in there too. David's "big" Santa gift is the "Destiny's Bounty" Lego Ninjago set.

Tim's big gift?  This awesome T-shirt quilt that I had commissioned for him.  My sister made it and she did a great job.  It's nice to get his favorite, extremely ratty, can't-be-worn-because-they-look-yucky-but-he-doesn't-want-to-get-rid-of-them T-shirts into a usable form :).

And me.  I got more dishtowels, 2 scarves, 2 books, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

OK, so I look awful in the pictures because, y'all, it was 5:15 in the morning!  But, because I'm not totally vain, here I am.

Anyway, after our house, it's off to Aunt Leigh Ann's house (Tim's sister), where the men enjoyed cooking us breakfast.  OK, some women helped too, but I wasn't one of them.  To my credit, I cook dinner at least 3 times a week every week of the year, so I figured a day off wouldn't hurt.

We started our celebration by stuffing ourselves with tons of breakfast - we're talking eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrown casserole, biscuits, pancakes and muffins plus all the gravy and syrup you can load your plate with.  We ate good.

Then we opened presents which was fun.  Once again we drew names among the adults and had a good time finding out who had everyone's name.  There were 2 new family members to share with this year.  My brother-in-law is now engaged and his fiancee and her son had their first Christmas with our clan.

Then it was on to my parent's house, where the kids were so excited that they just tore through all their paper.  The adults took it a little more slowly and took turns watching what each other got.

See how patiently I'm waiting.

My brother and his family are getting ready to go serve in Asia for 3 years so we tried to soak up and savor as much time with them this year as we could.

My favorite gift of the day wasn't even a Christmas gift.  In September, my parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.  The 3 of us kids decided to make them a photobook of the last 40 years.  We were a little late in giving it to them, but it was an awesome book, if I do say so myself.

Great Christmas!  Tiring Christmas!  Now only 12 more months until Christmas again.