The Crow's Nest: Christmas Festivities

It has been a whirlwind past few weeks with many Christmas events going on. Hard to believe another Christmas is behind us!!! We had a wonderful Christmas with family and lots of fun celebrating. I'm just going to go ahead and show the pics of several of the things we have been up to over the last couple weeks. Its going to be a long post but we have had A LOT of festivities over the last week!

First up was Brooklynn's class Christmas party. I volunteered to help out in her classroom that day with the Christmas party. I love being able to be involved with her school events - definitely one of the many factors when I decided to leave my job last year.

The next event was on the Saturday before Christmas. We headed to the annual Christmas Party/family reunion with Andy's Grandpa's side of the family. Its always neat to see how much the family has grown and changed over the year - especially since we don't get to see most of the extended family over the year. This year there were 50+ people there and still growing!

The following day on Sunday, we celebrated Andy's Grandma's 80th birthday with a big celebration of her closest friends and family. It was a really nice Open House style party filled with tons of people wishing her happy birthday wishes.

Next event on the list was the annual Progressive Dinner. We start out at one person's house for the appetizers then head to the next house for the main course and the final house for the desserts. Such a neat way to spend time together and get to see all the fun Christmas decorations each house has displayed. Here's a pic of Andy and me on this evening.

On Friday, Christmas Eve, we headed over to Andy's Mom's house to celebrate with Andy's sisters and their families. We alternate houses each year, and technically this year was supposed to be at our house, but since I was leaving in 2 days, Andy's Mom offered to host it for us - HUGE help!!! Thank you Cheryll :) We had a really nice time visiting and letting the kids play together. Unfortunately Andy's sister, Mindy's husband, Joey had to work so we missed spending the day with him too - esp Brookie - she loves her Uncle Joey - like she always tells us...."Uncle Joey is a silly guy!" hehehehe! But luckily for her, his stand in was there ;) Mindy brought over one of their early baby gifts they received - a Koala bear stuffed animal with a 'Baby Joey' in its pouch...so Joey was there with us that day!!

The kids got so many fun gifts - they didn't know which way to turn - it defintely looked like a toy store exploded in the living room that day!

Finally we made it to Christmas Day. The kids woke up and got to see what Santa brought them.....funny story was that we actually had to wake up Brooklynn & Cannon to open the presents. Andrew woke up bright and early - but he's an early bird like his Dad...and well Cannon just is too young to get it...but Brookie - she was out! But as soon as we woke her up she was ready to go check it all out!

The Christmas tree after Santa stopped by for a visit...

Close up of the new stockings I had ordered this year - and personalized - love them!

Our annual pose in front of the tree before all the chaos...its fun to look back at these each year and see how much the kids have grown & changed over the year!

Time to dig in and see all their surprises!

Cannon enjoyed all the paper....and even got pretty good at helping to rip his presents open....

Of course as soon as a piece of paper got ripped off....it went straight to his mouth to eat!!! hahahahaha!

That afternoon we headed over to Andy's grandparents house for a yummy lunch and fun times with the family. So much food was made - love this time of year!

Woohoo!!! Actually got a really nice family shot - not an easy task these days!! Thanks Missy :)

Each year the kids open gifts from family and the adults get to play some new fun game in a gift card exchange. This year we definitely had many many laughs! There were many games that were played - and they ranged from things like putting vaseline on your nose and trying to get a pom pom ball to stick by throwing it in the air or trying to get a cookie to move from your forehead into your mouth without using your hands or tying a kleenex box to your back and having several jingle bells in there and having to wiggle/dance/shake the bells out and other crazy things like that! Luckily Andy & I both ended up drawing some things that weren't quite so embarrassing...hehehehe!

I drew a game that required me to unwrap a toilet paper roll in a minute....um yeah - I can so handle that one!!! Lol - Brookie was my inspiration - can't tell you how much toilet paper she wasted when she was younger...lol! Needless to say - I didn't have any problems beating that minute deadline...hahahahaha!

Andy drew a game that required him to arrange 8 bags in order from least to greatest - each bag contained anywhere from 1-8 jingle bells and he had to get them in order just by shaking the bag and listening to how much noise it made - ie. 1 bell, 2 bells, 3 bells, etc all the way to 8 bells....and he did it perfectly!