Christmas

Chaos and stress or not, Christmas just always seems to be the best.And it was crazy this year because the kids slept in (after an initial false-call wake-up at 4:00) until 6:30. …maybe it was due to the fact that my brothers and sis-in-law were around to keep them entertained for a little bit before Dave and I got woken up. In our family Santa brings the stockings to the kids’ bedrooms. That way they have stuff to hang out and play with/eat when they wake up too early.

We debated not waking Lu up until a little later but the kids (and Josh) were appalled at that idea. So Max went in and got her…man oh man she was a grump:
Every year at 7:00 the kids go sit on the stairs and sing Christmas songs to wake me and Dave up, but we’re never still asleep by then. Just gotta do it for tradition’s sake (that’s what my family always did).

The kids were SO excited to go downstairs. Max is hiding his eyes from seeing what’s down in the family room:(At this point Lucy was just sitting there bawling…no pictures for that gal.)

Everyone was pretty darn excited about what Santa left for them.
Lu sure cheered up quick when she saw what she got.Dave gave me the best present ever: time. I get to go to a hotel all by myself for a day and get caught up on my life. Man I am so excited I can hardly stand it.

Dave got some super duper exciting shirts and a sweater from me.

As per tradition, we always have Dave’s parents (and sister if she’s around) over for a big Christmas breakfast.
We felt pretty spoiled to have both sets of grandparents around…
After hanging out and playing with our stuff all day we headed over to Dave’s parents for the traditional cousin white elephant gift exchange. What a day. Next year I swear I’m going to figure out a way to slow it down a little bit.