We did Christmas a little different this year because everyone was traveling to Florida (normally we pick someone's house and not all of the families have to travel such a long distance) and we had limited space in the rental house. Normally, all the families bring all their gifts to one another and to our extended family. There isn't any opening gifts with just your immediate family. We start with the youngest child and he/she opens one gift and we move on from youngest to oldest, each opening one at a time until all the gifts have been opened. Yes, this takes hours. We take a break for breakfast casserole and drinks in the middle of the gift opening. I think it just builds the anticipation of opening gifts and really makes Christmas morning special.
This year, we just had a few gifts to exchange. We all bought my Grandpa and Susan something and one of the families did a few family gifts because they were all in town from various parts of the country. Because we didn't do a lot of gifts this year, we all opened our stockings one by one. Usually we tear into the stockings first thing in the morning but this was a fun way of doing a little of our tradition. Since most of us were driving in from hotels and we didn't have any little kids that knew it was Christmas, we decided to start at 10am instead of the crack of dawn. I was thankful to sleep in and take a nice long shower to recover from the little sleep I got the day before. Breakfast casserole and mimosas were served before the present opening got started.
my sisters with Emma Cate
Hobo was enjoying Daddy's gummy bears. We always get our favorite candy in our stockings.
We may have forgotten our stockings at home and Santa had to improvise. The basket above and cardboard box below worked well :)
Look! Santa brought a Lightening McQueen cup!
My mom's youngest sister with EC
I looked all over for this ball! She started playing with one at our friend's house a few days before Christmas and loved it. Thanks to my wonderful facebook friends, I was able to find them in the party favor isle at Target. I helped Santa out a little and snuck this in her stocking.
After opening stockings, it was time for lunch. We always eat a big Christmas dinner/lunch around 3pm. My mom was in charge of making the stuffing and realized that she didn't have enough sausage for the recipe. My sisters and I went out on a sausage quest. We looked everywhere for some place that was open and sold sausage. No dice. We ended up at Denny's and picked up a bunch of sausage links to chop up. We took some selfies while we waited. We seriously have the best time together! I am so thankful for my sisters.
this last picture is our "retiree of florida picture" i.e. smile without your teeth!
(I know... we are terrible)
I was thankful the babies napped through lunch and I got to enjoy a little time with my cousins outside by the pool.
grown up kids table
After lunch we headed to beach for family pictures. My immediate family always does matching Christmas jammies. All members of the fam must match from infants to grandparents. We decided just to stay in our jammies for our beach pictures. The weather was awesome and we were getting hot in our pants and long sleeves! My family is a bunch of goofballs. We pretty much took over this beach playground and acted like little kids. The first pictures are of everyone getting to the beach and getting set up for the pictures.
trying to set the self timers
wrangling babies that ran into the gulf.
family beach pic
these kids LOVED being tossed in the air and it made a cute picture.
Susan snapping photos!
My grandpa just looking out on the chaos that is his family
sisters
the girls. we normally take a piggyback picture but this prego wasn't climbing on anyone's back. We faked it with me being on the ground.
Grandpa and the greats
love this shot of me, ec, and baby shep
this kid LOVED the ocean. This summer is going to be super fun and super chaotic at the beach.
Jay would not take off his shoes. He is sand-o-phobic and I thought it was hilarious when Holden would take off into the water and Jay had to lean all the way in to get him without getting his shoes wet. #nicewife
watching powerboats go by
vineyard vines christmas pjs
Grandpa and 7 of the 11 grandkids and his 2 greats
my family
yes, we climbed this structure. my dad was so freaked that I was up there and pregnant.
trying for a Christmas on the steps pic.
After Christmas photos we came back and played dirty Santa. Instead of doing a gift exchange this year we all had to bring a $10 gift and we did a white elephant type exchange. Jay and I brought Cards Against Humanity (I blew the $10 limit a bit) and a Sexy Chef Apron (an apron printed with a lady in lingerie). We ended up with a child's super hero costume and a 6 pack of Alaskan beer (my oldest cousin and his wife live in Alaska).
Shortly after, we packed up and began the next leg of our journey, our trip to Orlando. Before we left I surprised my family with these t-shirt I had made for our trip. Matching t-shirts was pretty much the hightlight of Disney... just kidding... but it was really cute and we got tons of compliments!
We got into Orlando around 9:30 and my my sister's fiance at the hotel. The kids went right to sleep and we enjoyed a little pizza party in our suite. We finally got to bed around 12. Ready to wake up at the crack of dawn and begin our Disney Adventure!
No comments:
Post a Comment