Monday, December 27, 2010

Christmas 2010

Oh man, as my friend Krista said on her blog...I promise we celebrated Christmas and I promise there is photographic proof. Lately, I've just been feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of all of our photos and the task of getting them organized and displayed places...mind you I mean displayed here on the blog and on fb and similar stuff. Add in a full time job, two crazy boys, a few too many positions with my alumnae group and my pretty large capacity is overflowing! Our Christmas stuff is still up folks...gifts still hanging out in the great room. Eek.

We're fortunate for a few reasons when it comes to celebrating Christmas with the family. For one, all of our immediate family is local so there's no concern of who will be traveling and spending gobs of cash to trek across the country. Second, my family and Jeff's family celebrate Christmas on different days so we also don't have to deal with splitting the day up or trading off years. So lucky on this one I think!!

Jeff's family does all their holiday festiveness on Christmas Eve. In the past, we'd always attend midnight mass but now that there are so many kids in our family, we go to an earlier mass before dinner. There is a very odd traditional meal of cream of wheat, sausage, sour kraut followed by chaotic gift opening. I love it, but everything with the Barnes side of our family is chaotic - that is what happens with a large family. Then again, anything is considered large in comparrison to my little fam. Anyway, there were about 20 of us there for Christmas Eve and we're loud. True story.

Bear patiently waiting for prezzies to begin

Maddie being all sorts of adorable

Noah grabbed Jacob and refused to let go. Jake found it hilarious.

Several of the kiddos opening their gifts. This was the first round and by the end you couldn't even see the ground thanks to all the wrapping paper mess

Madison's gift was nearly bigger than she is!

Connor loved his airplane from the Blums

and Noah liked the car they got him too

Christmas morning is held at our house and it's quite smaller than the Christmas Eve celebration the night before. This is the first year we set cookies and milk out for Santa because it's really the first year Connor really got it so it was fun. First thing in the morning Connor woke us up telling us that Santa drank all the milk but didn't finish his cookies. Exhauseted, I told Connor that if he wanted he could finish them up for Santa - at 7 o'clock in the morning. He was thrilled!
My parents arrived that morning and we had mimosas and some brunch-like food. Champagne. Yum. I'm a fan. After that, it was present opening but first I tortured my children by forcing them to pose by all their presents for a few photos.
have I mentioned how difficult it is to get a good pic of 4 people at one time? Nearly impossible - see above :) BTW, these are our Christmas pajamas. Love.

trying to decide where to start first...

oh the sibling annoyance at Christmas was pretty intense. Noah's favorite toy is clearly whatever Connor is currently playing with.

Now that Noah is mobile, it's tough to get good pics of him. I gave up and just threw this cute tee on his rear and snapped a shot. done and done.

my dad gave Jeffrey a nerf gun game for the wii. i don't honestly know if Jeff's played the game yet, but I can say that we've totally taken turns sneaking up on the other person and shooting them with the nerf bullets. We're extremely mature if you didn't know.
Papa gave Connor an ornament with his Tball picture in it. The ornament plays All Star and Connor loves it

This was one of the favorites. It's a huge, really huge, really huge, race track. Oh, and it's noisy. By favorite I clearly meant it was a favorite of his, not me.

this is all Noah wants to do anymore I swear
Noah spent most of the holiday chewing on stuff - so much that a collage was needed
Yes. Noah pulled himself up and stood while holding on to something for the first time on Christmas day. Too fast, slow down Bear!!


We had a great Christmas and were thankful for the chance to spend the holidays with family so close. We hope you all had a great Christmas as well!!

1 comment:

Karen said...

I am so glad that I'm not the only one with a tree still up! :) I am loving the Christmas jammies too. I decided that I looked fat in mine and didn't post any pictures. :)