Christmas 2016

 This Christmas we had the whole fam damily here again! It's always lots of fun, and running around (I won't complain, I won't complain....). Mo suggested we do family pics at Caleb's Park since we aren't all together often enough.

 Then we went to their house for the annual Christmas Eve family gift exchange!

Maddie was beside herself to finally get an American Girl doll....well, a Wellie Wisher, the smaller (and cheaper) version I made, er, asked Oma nicely to get since she's not super responsible enough with toys for a hundred and thirty dollar doll.

Legos, Superheroes and Wii ganes for this cat and life was awesome. 

Spreading the reindeer food!

 So, full disclosure, cause, well, Santa may be listening....I totally forgot to do cookies. In the chaos of it all, I flaked. On cookies. THE most important Christmas Eve tradition of them all. Luckily, we had some donuts so I made up some half-baked story about Santa eating soooo many cookies, surely he's sick of them and needs some variation. They bit. Phew, crisis averted.

 The morning of, Garret's family joined us for some food and present opening!

Our yard-decorating neighbors found this huge Minion on clearance and decided not to add it to their display and offered it to us, knowing Gavin is obsessed with both Minions and inflatables. So we took it. It's still up. Someone refuses to let us take it down. I'm writing this January 12th.

 THEN, we went to Tamra's for lunch. See the food above? Still full but ya gotta make room for turkey.

THEN, we had a super casual BBQ in our backyard and played Pie Face. I was starting to feel the stress of all the running around but this was actually really relaxing.  No pressure, no fuss. Thank God for easy going family! And wine....

Although I gripe about the place to place, I truly love being with family....I never laugh harder or feel more myself than around those that know me best and love me anyway.

These kids are all growing up so fast and I love to just be with them and watch them blossom into great humans. That's all I want for Christmas.....