Christmas Day 2011

Finally!  It's Christmas Day :-)  I know I've mentioned this before but both my dad and my brother, Ken, are pastor's.  Ken is the pastor of the church that I grew up in; My dad was the pastor there until he "retired" a few years ago and went part time.  So our Christmas day was broken up some by heading to church which was fine after all, what is the focus of the season anyway?  (With that said, lets keep it real . .. if they WEREN'T the pastor's, well, I think we would have went to the Christmas Eve Service and then enjoyed Christmas Day as a family - we aren't all together very often!) 

We got up that morning and my parents made breakfast - cinnamon rolls and Easy Ham Quiche.  It was super yummy.  After breakfast, we headed to church.   Once we got home (we had to wait FOREVER for my brother and my niece and her fiance to get there HA!) we headed to the basement to open gifts.  It was so much fun!  We decided to draw names this year for the adults and then everyone bought for the kids and for my parents.  We did set gift limits so it was fun to see how creative people could be!!  Once we had opened all of the gifts, we headed back upstairs for a great dinner.  My mom made Ham, Cheesy Potatoes, Sweet Potato Casserole, Corn and Caramel Apple Salad.  Plus my sister-in-law made some fantastic punch (which we are going to have on New Years Eve!) With all of that said, I'm going to post a punch of photos just to share our wonderful day :-)

The boys were showered with tons of great gifts.  They got some awesome Doug and Melissa trucks and toys.  Plus some great learning toys too.  Not to mention trains and trucks!  Nate got a Sing-a-ma-Jig and he LOVES it!  He'll bring it to me and say "Tummy Mom" because he wants me to make it sing!  They also got a Thomas the Train bath toy - they now ask to get in the bath and they play there forever.  It is so much fun to watch.  Of course, they also got loud toys because some of my sister-in-laws feel the need to give us loud toys - I don't mind at all though.  The louder the better :-) HA! 
Darryl and I didn't do too poorly either - I got a Kindle Touch as well as some great kitchen stuff and Darryl got a back pack and gift cards for a coat :-) 

Our original plan had been for Darryl to leave since he had to get up at 12:30 and head home while I stayed the night with the boys to enjoy the family but the boys had other plans.  By about 4:30 they were DONE!  Josh stood outside the my parents front door (yes, outside) and cried that he wanted to go home!!  They had had enough!!! I guess the late night on Christmas Eve, an early morning on Christmas after a rough night of sleeping somewhere strange, so many gifts and so many people just caught up with them.  So we loaded up and headed home; both boys were asleep before too long and went right to bed when we got home. 

Over all it was a fabulous Christmas - just a great time with family!!!