Christmas

We had a hectic, but wonderful holiday season.  The busy-ness was compounded by my crazy work schedule, four Christmas celebrations, a trip to Wisconsin, two birthdays, and a Great Wolf Lodge adventure.

Our first Christmas celebration took place with Mimi & Pa and that side of the family.  On Christmas Eve, we celebrated with with Clark family and two great grandparents...

Anna all dressed up on Christmas Eve

daddy & Ben

4 of the kids got a little crazy after dinner with the anticipation of another round of presents,

so they had this dance party while waiting for the adults

A few days prior to Christmas (I got my pictures all out of order), the kids got to open presents from Mimi and Pa.  It was pure chaos.  The room looked like a wrapping paper bomb went off.  It was pretty fun to see 3 of the kids so excited about gift giving and receiving.  With each new box, their little faces would light up.

Anna found the chocolate

uncle Ronnie holding down his usual spot on the couch

Pa and Addison

This year, the three adult kids put together a book of all the pictures of our adventures 

throughout the year.  It was a hit!

Christmas Morning

Christmas day we had all to ourselves.  With unrealistic hopes of sleeping in and napping, staying in jammies all day, and playing and being lazy.  No chores, no running around, just being together.  And that is exactly what we did (minus the sleeping in and napping, of course).

so excited to find out Santa had stopped at our house

a new friend for Mickey!

and lots and lots of cars

And after all the presents were opened upstairs, we discovered a note from Santa buried in the Christmas tree.  He snuck one more present into the playroom in the basement...

a train table!

and the kids loved it.

And for our final celebration of Christmas, we headed to Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures from that day.  But three of four, not bad!  I did manage loads of pictures from our trip to Great Wolf, so stay tuned for that.  

In the meantime, I think it's safe to say that we are so lucky and blessed to have so much family to celebrate with and the means to give our kids and our nieces and nephews a wonderful and fun holiday season.  This was a really fun year for us; the kids are at just the right ages to have made it really great.  Hope you all had wonderful holidays, too!