Christmas 2013, Part 3

On December 26th, many people wake up and their Christmas is over. That's not generally the case for us. Each year, we typically have an early Christmas, a Christmas Day Christmas, and a late Christmas. This year on the 26th, we woke up, packed up the car, and headed to my parents' house for our next Christmas. 

It takes about 3 hours to drive to my parents' house from our house, so we like to leave during naptime when we can hoping the kiddos will sleep most of the drive. The kids did sleep for a good while, and we arrived at my parents' house at about 4:00pm. My sister and her family were there, as was my Granny and my nephew, Jordan. Granny had been there for about a week with my parents, and it was so fun to have her there for our Christmas. We had a great dinner of chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes (again! I had my fill of mashed potatoes during this week!), then just spent a bit of time together before bed.

The next morning (Friday the 27th), my brother and his family joined us at my parents' house. My brother's wife's family lives close, so they were visiting them for the holiday, but were able to come be with us for the day. We ended up do our gift exchange before lunch this year, which was different but fun!

This is such a great photo of my Granny and brother! Love it!

Chloe Jo is a Grampy's girl for sure.

My parents have these huge windows in their living room that allow the sun to just pour in. It makes picture taking a bit difficult.

Chris, Russ, Lisa, and Shawna

My nephew was being HILARIOUS. My mom thought this photo was awful, but I crack up when I see it.

GREAT photo of Jordan and Kaylee!

Chris and I . . . our kids were too busy hanging out with their cousins to get in on our photo.

Brianna and Chloe Jo . . . sweet girlies.

They tend to compete a bit for Grampy's attention. Okay, maybe more than a bit *sigh*.

Brenson and Kaylee both enjoyed Brenson sitting with her during the gift opening.

I didn't really get any photos of the actual gift opening. I was enjoying being in the moment and not behind the camera. Bren did get a fantastic workbench from my parents that my dad made. He LOVES it and plays with it everyday. I didn't get any photos of him opening it as I was taking a video (and the lighting is TERRIBLE due to those windows), but here is a photo of it in his bedroom.

It has a great little drawer (it's green and hard to see in this photo) to hold all of his tools, along with the tray on the bottom. My dad also made pegs to go in all the holes so that he can hang part of his tools. Also, my dad cut a baseball bat in half and put in on each leg as decoration. Such a special treasure!

I tried so hard to get a great photo of the grandkids in the wrapping paper, but it wasn't meant to be this year. Brianna REFUSED to look, but it's good of everyone else.

My Granny got all of the older girls (and yes, that includes Kaylee now . . . she growing up TOO fast) these Christmas sweater vests, so we had to take a photo of us all in them. This is such a good photo of all of us.

Lisa and I had been making fun of a photo that someone had put on FB the day before (not someone in our family, just a friend that we have in common). It was a photo of several of their family members, but they were all just standing straight on to the camera and NO ONE was smiling. They weren't even really touching at all? It was the strangest photo, so we felt the need to recreate it! Heehee! Lisa and Kaylee couldn't keep a straight face, but it's still hilarious!

Loved having this special time with my Granny!

After lunch, we put the littles down for naps then had some good adult time playing games and visiting. Mom is always so good to have a few small activities planned, so after the littles got up we dipped pretzels. I adore this photo of Brianna and Kaylee!

Each little had a helper. Kaylee helped Brianna, Granny helped Bren, and Mom helped Chloe Jo. I took photos :-). Brenson was trying to make his face smile in this photo.

This is great of Granny . . . I just wish Bren was looking.

Here is everyone working before the mess set in :-).

Chloe Jo and G-Jo

I think Granny had the biggest challenge. I know this will surprise you, but Bren just wanted to eat the activity, ha!

Kaylee is so good with the littles. She was sure to hold back Bri's hair so it didn't get in the chocolate.

Chloe Jo was concentrating so hard!

Yep, Bren is eating in this photo :-).

The finished product wasn't perfect for sure, but the kids loved the activity. And, all the pretzels got eaten so I guess they were good. I didn't try one.

Jeremy, Shawna, and Kaylee left Friday evening to head back to Shawna's parents' house (Jordan and Grampy were building some furniture in my Dad's shop, so he stayed there with my parents), but my family and my sister's family stayed until Saturday afternoon. We ended up doing a little (actually, A LOT) of kid-free shopping with Granny on Saturday morning. Whew! That woman can SHOP and wore us out! But, it was a fun morning :-).

We actually went back to my parents' house on Monday the 30th for a few days to spend some more time with my parents and Granny. More details on that to come!