After our Christmas Eve brunch we cleaned up and prepared for dinner at my parents house. Normally we are just in town visiting so we spend the night (along with all my siblings), but since we are in our own place now we just went over for dinner, the Christmas story, presents, and dessert. Dinner was delicious, prime rib, stuffed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls. I made a toffee cake for dessert that was pretty good. My niece read the Christmas story from the scriptures and we opened presents since we wouldn't be there on Christmas morning. It was a lovely evening. I love my family so so much and it was nice being ALL together.
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| We always have to take a big group pic before dinner. |
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| The kid table. |
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| Have I mentioned how much I love this baby?! |
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| Ollie being silly in a bumbo. |
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| Max is a bottomless pit, and a mooch. He loves to just wander around getting bites from everyone. I think he ate 80% of my grandpa's dessert. |
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| Another group shot. |
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| I love how into this my mom is, using her hands and everything. |
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| My tough dad sporting his new sunglasses. |
I was pretty excited to celebrate Christmas morning as a family in our new house. There are traditions I look forward to starting but our kids are still a little too young. We did get cookies out for Santa though and Ollie was happy to see that he ate most of them (Max cleaned up his crumbs Christmas morning). I am also feeling really strongly about not spoiling my kids and setting ridiculous expectations for Christmas. While they are young I want to stress that Christmas is about Christ's birth and not about tons of presents. I think we did pretty well. Ollie was excited about Christmas but it wasn't just for presents, it was for the whole experience and time with family. I know it will become more and more difficult as they get older, but I really don't want my kids to be part of the generation who expects everything and is not grateful. Does that make sense?
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| Ollie got this cool Hexbug thing from my parents. He is a big fan. |
After Christmas morning we just hung out around the house, went to church and I prepared cheesy potatoes for our extended family get together that afternoon. We missed the Jansirkersorns, those lucky guys were in Hawaii for Christmas, but it was still lots of fun. We do a white elephant gift exchange that is always a hoot.
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| Ollie had a lot of fun running around. |
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| Getting ready for the gift exchange. |
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| More waiting. |
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| Me anxiously awaiting my turn, Maggie striking a pose :) |
Jason's whole family was in Idaho for Christmas so we didn't get to see them on the actual holiday, but after leaving my aunts house we came home and finished packing, went to bed about 10 and woke up at 3 to start the 11 hour drive to Idaho. More to come on that. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year!!
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