Christmas Part 2- Christmas Eve

This is us in the car pulling out of our neighborhood at 4:33am. Yes, we are crazy 

We hoped that the kids would fall back asleep as soon as we got in the car and would sleep until we stopped for breakfast around 8am. No luck, they were up until 6 and were hungry little boogers! They both had their first taste of egg mcmuffin because mcdonalds is the only thing open at 5am.

We turned them around to face forward so that they could watch dvds on the trip down. Cars and Finding Nemo were their (and daddy's) favorites. Jay actually researched how he could watch movies on the navigation screen in the front of the car while the car was in drive. 

I drove the first 1.5 hours of the trip before deciding it was time for a nap. Jay drove the next hour while I snoozed. I love driving and am normally good to go on late nights and early mornings but this trip was different due to lack of sleep the night before and pregnancy. I ended up driving the remainder of the way after breakfast and loved keeping up with traffic down 95. If I haven't mentioned it before, I LOVE to drive and fight Jay for the keys almost every time we are in the car together.

We arrived in New Port Richey Florida (just north of Tampa) around 3:00pm. We had time to chill for just a bit in the hotel before heading to Christmas Eve service at 5pm. I found a Methodist church down there and Jay, my sister Allie, and I took the kids. It was a family friendly service and my children's first time in big church. It was a disaster. We quickly moved to the quiet room to watch the service on TV but the kids were just not having it. We left early to meet the rest of our extended family for a pizza dinner, our Christmas Eve tradition. 

trying to keep this child entertained with selfies

melt downs....

I don't think I took any pictures of dinner but imagine a table of 19 people who haven't seen each other in a long time chatting away and drinking heavily. 

My aunt and uncle rented a house near my Grandpa and Susan's (his long-term girlfriend). Their house is too small to accommodate all of us. We all headed back there after dinner to hangout and play games. It was bittersweet. We knew this was probably the last Christmas we'd be spending with my Grandpa (my only living grandparent) but we were all in good spirits and made the best of the time we had together. Like I said before, we've always traveled on Christmas and these big family Christmases are just what I'm used to. We always eat pizza (usually at Pizza Hut) on Christmas eve and then hangout afterwards. We do all our gifts on Christmas morning.

Another of my aunts (My mom is one of 5 children) made these koozies for celebration. Art is my Grandpa. Note my koozie with the water bottle. No booze for this girl.

This girl LOVES to drink anything that the adults are drinking. She kept leaning over to get her mouth on the beer bottle. Of course, we did NOT let her have any!

My mom and Grandfather

There are 11 cousins on my mom's side and 9 of us are girls. We have a lot of fun when we get together!

After lots of drinks, games, and hanging out time, we retreated to the hotel to get some sleep before the big day.