Christmas 2011

A few days before Christmas my mom called to see if we wouldn't mind having her, my dad, Brandon and Serena here for Christmas. Joel and I were like, what? YES! (you know you all are invited to my house any time). So, the Wednesday before Christmas we had 4 extra family members in our home. It was so FUN! The kids were crazy happy to have grandma there to give them lots of attention. We got to enjoy the comforting constant sounds of Robo, Brandon created a short cartoon starring Gabe and Mason (with a guest appearance from Emrie). We did a puzzle, cooked, baked, watched movies, went bowling, saw Tangled, and had a good ol' time. Below are a few pictures from this Christmas:

This is our Christmas Eve dinner. We had glazed ham, my totally yummy (they really should be a dessert) yams, jellied cranberries (for Gabe), green stuff (watergate salad, or pistachio salad...whatever you want to call it), Joel's rolls, green beans and carrots sauted with almonds, and of course the bubb-lay (looks like mom's enjoying that!). We didn't have silly faces through the whole dinner in case you were wondering.

Then, on Christmas Eve, toward bed-time we heard some sleigh bells coming from outside. Emrie totally FREAKED and started to cry (happens every year) and wanted to go to bed right away. Here are the kids looking out the window for Santa's sleigh.

The sleepy heads on Christmas morning. Gabe came into our room around 7:00 (it felt like 3 AM). And by 7:30 everyone was awake and ready to go downstairs.

Here are the "kids." I bet Serena and Brandon loved being called "kids." We torture them by making them wait at the top of the stairs until we got some good pictures.