Christmas 2011 pt 1

We had a great Christmas this year. We were able to spend it with both of our families. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day morning with the Jon's family and then we had "Christmas Eve" all over again with my family. You see Jon's family rotates every year, one year is his family year the next is the in law year. But my family never did that. We always just spent Christmas Eve with our family, then Christmas Day with the in-laws. And since this year was technically Jon's family's year my family decided to switch things up a bit. We decided that spending time as a family is more important than the day. So we changed our big Christmas Eve festivities to Christmas day night and moved our "Christmas morning" stuff to the morning of the 26th. This made it possible for us to celebrate with both of our families. I totally think this is a genius plan, we got a full 3 days of Christmas festivities instead of just 1 1/2. The kids were super worn out by the 3rd day from all the activity and sugar, but it was still so much fun.

We started Christmas Eve at 11 and just snacked on some food and relaxed. Taegen took a nap and the adults played a game called "Quelp". It was actually really fun. I made a fool of myself a couple times. After Taegen woke up the kids decorated gingerbread houses. Taegen didn't do much decorating. He just picked up the candy and ate it instead of sticking it on the house. He did put a few pieces on the house, but mostly he just ate the candy and I decorated it. And I use the term decorate very loosely. I really just grabbed some candy and stuck it to the frosting where ever I could find a spot. I figured T would just eat it all anyways so there's no reason to make it look pretty.

After the decorating we ate Grandpa's clam chowder, had a dance party for the kids then we had a surprise guest. (more pictures to come, I only got pictures of Jon with Santa but grandpa got more). After Santa we did the gift exchange. Taegen went up stairs with me for a minute and un unbeknownst to me he found one of his gifts and unwrapped it. It was some "Cars" slippers and if you can't tell from the picture below... he loves them! He wouldn't take them off. 

 dance party

 T admiring the tree. The glittery ornaments were his favorite.

 relaxing in the corner while daddy was taking a nap.

 No one was paying attention for a minute and this is where we found him, stuffing his face with candy

 enjoying his present from grandma and grandpa E

 matching pajamas

The next morning we opened presents with just our little family. One of the first presents Taeg opened was a miniature Mater and McQueen. Needless to say he didn't want to open any of his other presents. I love his facial expressions in so many of these that I just had to post them all...fair warning, there are a lot of them.