Visiting family

Our family visit began with the Christmas Day drive to Troy's sister's house. We had a nice dinner with some of Troy's family.

The after dinner presents were probably a bit more exciting for the kids.  The each got a new bank with their names and some money to go in it too!

Justin and Megan had a new kitten.  Timothy enjoyed lots of cuddles with the kitty and thankful it wasn't really shedding and Timothy's allergies were not bad at all.

Susie has all the fun games too!  Timothy wanted to play pie face, but we got to try Pie Face Cannon instead.  By the end, Timothy was about the only one who wanted whip cream catapulted into his face.

Our next stop was my mom's house.  The kids really got into sorting the presents.  They made quite a fortress of gifts in order to sort the gifts into family groups.  We don't put our gifts out until Christmas day, so it is fun for them to look through the gifts and wonder what they will get.

On Tuesday we had our family celebration with my side of the family.  Lots of laughs, fun, cousins and gifts.  It is a full day, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  It was wonderful to be together again.

Smiles during gift opening

Just some cousins and their dogs!

Lisa always does the individual kid shots by the tree.  I am not sure they love it, but the pictures are pretty cute!

And of course their is the annual cousins Christmas program.  The play was directed by Tate this year.  Teresa starred as Mary and Timothy was a King and the director of the Christmas choir at the end.  The choir was new this year.

Another activity that the kids have come to love is pantry bingo at my mom's house.  She picks random items from her pantry and the kids win that as bingo prizes!

When we were done celebrating Christmas we had some good cousin time.  Timothy enjoyed time with the younger boys.  They had fun playing football, playing on the ice, and taking a dip in the hot tub!

Teresa had lots of quality time with Fiona.  There were a few dog weddings, resin tag making and a bit of sledding too.

Eventually it was time to leave, so we did some goodbye pictures.  Timothy picked the decor for his picture.  And the girls were showing off their matching pants and shirts.

It was a wonderful visit to family.  We had fun and all stayed healthy.  There is so much to be thankful for!

 

Christmas

Christmas Eve was low key as usual.  Timothy played with a friend, Troy and Teresa did a little shopping and I hung out at home.  We went to the 4pm church service which was pretty full for a change.  Timothy got recruited to do the PowerPoint slides.

Christmas dinner was the same as last year--fish, mac and cheese, a hot dog and some sides.  Something to please everyone, although I am a little tired of making 3 separate meals.  We'll see what next year brings!  After dinner it was hot chocolate and cookies and the movie Elf.  We also played a few rounds of a Christmas blooket.

Teresa was up earlier than Timothy on Christmas morning and had to wait awhile.  We watched our church's brief Christmas day service online.  Soon enough we were all up and opening our stocking gifts.

Ready to open!

Stocking gifts!

For breakfast we had some chocolate peppermint scones.  Then we listened to the Christmas story, did advent and opened the rest of our gifts.  It was a nice morning and fairly relaxing and unrushed.