Happy New Year!

Here's more from the snow storm Christmas Eve/Day...Happy New Year to all. Have fun and drive safely!

Our Little Family Christmas Morning

Because we slept at my mom and dad's place, the sleeping arrangements were a little goofy. Josh and I slept in the basement bedroom. Riley was supposed to sleep upstairs in the crib, because Adrienne will only sleep in Grandma's "big girl bed" now, and Meg, Chris and Adee also spent the night in case Brynn decided to make an early arrival. However, in the middle of the night, Riley decided she was scared of Santa landing on the roof, so she ended up downstairs on an air mattress with Grandma and THEN she was worried about Santa coming through the chimney, so Grandma had to tell her Santa was going to leave her toys at her house, not Grandma's house so she would go to sleep finally.

Around 7:30 a.m., my mom brought Riley down to wake up Josh and I and then we found out Santa really DID come to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Sneaky guy! (And lots of fun packing a car ahead of time and hiding everything!) She opened the presents from Santa and Baby Jesus and she was SO excited to open her "Lightyear" toy, whom she also calls Buster. "He brought me what I wanted!" she screamed.

We have NO IDEA where she got it in her head that she wanted Toy Story's Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Santa this year. She has MAYBE seen the movie once and that would have been almost a year ago! But she was excited that Santa knew! We had gone to see Santa, but she got stage fright and forgot to tell him what she wanted, so it was really amazing that Santa figured it out.

I should also explain the Baby Jesus gift. When I was a kid, we had a manger that was empty at the beginning of Advent. We would do an advent chain with good deeds written on it, and for everything nice we did, we got a piece of straw to put in the manger. If there was enough straw at Christmas, Baby Jesus would appear on Christmas morning sleeping in the manger, and there would be a present from him to us for his Birthday. We modified this tradition a bit, but essentially, Riley got "straw" in the form of yellow paper strips where we wrote her good deeds down and put them in the manger. When we came home, Baby Jesus was sleeping under our Christmas tree.

Happy Birthday Uncle D!

In the midst of all the photo chaos, we would like to take a moment to wish Uncle Darin a very Happy Birthday! We wish you many more happy celebrations ahead!

And I also can't forget that Darin's birthday also happens to be my friend Maureen's birthday too. Happy Birthday Mrs. Barkley!

Winter Wonderland?

I'm sure most of you know this already, but this Christmas was not my ideal concept of a White Christmas...if there HAS to be snow at Christmas, it certainly does NOT have to be a DUMPING of over a foot and nasty road conditions for the holiday. But that might just be because I prefer no snow at all... Here are some of the reasons we decided last-minute to stay overnight at my parents and redirect Santa's flight plan accordingly.

Christmas Eve Afternoon

Before the whole family arrives, we let the kids open their presents from all the aunties and uncles, grandma and grandpa so that it's not a big chaotic mess later in the evening. This went really well this year, since we opened all the adult gifts the week before and this was all about the kiddos! Zacky even shared his remote controlled car with Riley and showed her how it worked. He was such a good boy!! I don't think there were too many sharing issues except when Riley and Adrienne both wanted to ride Adee's new trike. That's not to say the kids were angels...no naps mean random meltdowns...but we survived ok!

The picture of the kids in gift bags was my mom's idea for a Christmas card...except I'm not sure yet if anyone got a good picture with all the kids looking in one direction:) We'll see I guess!

Y'all Ready for This?

I warn you...this is going to be photo overload for the next few days. I will attempt to cram in Christmas Eve and Christmas Day into the rest of this year:) Smooshed in the middle might be a few more pics of Brynn and that will be followed, hopefully, but some good shots of the wedding we will be attending this weekend. I make no promises that this won't spill over into next year;)

Let's start with Christmas Eve. We traditionally celebrate CE at my parents house usually with my grandparents, and every other year this includes my aunt, uncle and cousins on my dad's side. This year, Dan and Sharis have moved "home" to MN, but Timmer was out of town with his girlfriend's family so it still wasn't as packed of a house as it could be, but we certainly are a crowd! Including 6 kids under the age of 3 this year (Brynn held out just long enough to miss the party). The kids had a great time entertaining themselves at dinner and "Uncle Duck" provided the pony rides just in time for the "jammy party" after!

Note: Meg is the expert french braid queen in the family. Riley let her do her hair pretty for the night.

Daddy's Girl

I will have more pictures of both Brynn and Christmas to post soon, but it's been kinda busy around here trying to put away Christmas gifts, fix our snowblower, visit the new niece when I can, and try to get this house looking back to some form of "normal"...I have a semi-low key week ahead, so hopefully I will get more done on the photos. In the meantime, this is a picture Josh took of he and Roo after her skating lesson last week. She doesn't have lessons this week, so here's a "filler" until I can do more.