Christmas

Christmas morning with the presents under the tree before the boys came down.

First glimpse of the presents!

Opening their stockings.

Opening their presents.

"Santa" :)

In the afternoon we had Christmas with Jeremy's family. Here is "Papa Santa" handing out gifts.

Brandon opening more gifts.

D.J. coming out to the kitchen to see what was hidden there.

D.J. trying out what was hidden in the kitchen.

Christmas cookies!

We did our yearly tradition that the boys look forward to - decorating cookies.

Ready to start.

You can't really tell in the picture, but Brandon's mouth was full of cookie. He kept eating the cookies while he was supposed to be decorating them.

The boys decorating. We finally convinced Brandon that he was supposed to decorate them and not eat them. :)

Some of Brandon's cookies. He told me that he was done, I took the picture, then he decided that he wanted to decorate more. At the end, his cookie sheet was totally full, however I forgot to take a picture of it.

D.J.'s end result

Brandon & Elmo

The other day Brandon was playing with Elmo & I was able to capture some of it. I thought you might like to see it. (especially Grandma & Papa) The second one is the right way up on my computer, but I can't get it to be the right way when I upload it. So, you can either watch it sideways, or ignore it! :)

Decorating for Christmas

We have been decorated for almost a week now, but I have just now gotten around to posting our pictures. The boys were very interested in helping this year.

Sorting the pieces

Putting the tree together

Adding the ornaments

Brandon inspecting the job!

D.J. got tired of hanging the ornaments, but didn't want to quit until they were all hung, so he started hanging them together. He would hang them either with more than one on the same branch so that he didn't have to go hunting for a bare one, or he would take one and hook another one or two onto it, and then hang the first one on the branch. Here are two examples of his work!

Thanksgiving

This is a little late, but I guess better late than never, right? For Thanksgiving, we were able to go to my parents house. All of my siblings and their families and my Grandma H were there also. On the way there we ran into snow. It was coming down pretty hard, there were cars in the ditch everywhere, and the plows had not been through. There was about 3 inches of snow on the roads, so we were having to take it pretty slow. The plows eventually did come through, so then it was a little bit easier going. We ended up getting in to my parent's house about 4:30 Thursday morning. Needless to say, we were happy to get there and get to bed.

On Thursday, we had our Thanksgiving meal. We had lots of food, and lots of people. With all of us being home, there were 21 for Thanksgiving. It was interesting figuring out where everyone was going to be sitting! :) We had a lot of fun, and played games until way too late, then got up at 4:00 in the morning to join the madness. ;) My parents, my siblings, one brother-in-law, one niece, and my brother's girlfriend all went to brave the cold and the crowds. My wonderful husband was willing to stay home with our boys. This made it much easier on me! We shopped for a while, then stopped for breakfast, then went at it again. We had fun and were able to get some good deals.

Friday evening we celebrated Christmas as we will not all be together then. Then my siblings began to leave: the first one Friday evening, then Saturday, then Sunday. We were the last to leave, on Monday.

I neglected to take any pictures of Thanksgiving. :( However, on Friday Jeremy bought me a new camera (an early Christmas present so that I could go ahead and start using it), so I figured that I should try it out! So here are some pictures from Friday evening.

Opening gifts

Enjoying the Snacks