It's FINALLY over!

Hope you all had a great Christmas! Our family sure did! I believe Santa brought what everyone asked for, or was at least close. Maybe our boys will let us know when they come down from LEGO land upstairs. They received I believe 4 of the LEGO sets that have any where from 430-1100+ pieces. They'll be busy for a couple of days. We'll see them when they get hungry.
Our children were so excited Christmas Eve that they didn't want to go to sleep. I know, that's how most children are. But did they really have to stay up until 1:15 in the morning?! We track Santa, H1 goes along with it, and they kept coming into our room, "Where is he now?" So I would check and he would be closer, but they knew that he would skip our house if they weren't in bed. I know, it made it worse. I did end up shutting the computer down I guess around 12:30 or so. We finally made it to bed around 2.

Our morning began at 4, UGH! All HumV and I wanted for Christmas was sleep! H1 had set an alarm to wake up at 4. Her and I will talk about this alarm thing later, and maybe I will just make her set an alarm everyday. She jumps up "WAKE UP!! WAKE UP!!" I love her excitement even though things aren't the same for her.

It was a very busy day. We enjoyed having my mom and her husband, sister and her children and my brother and his dog over for Christmas morning. HumV always makes a wonderful Christmas breakfast. This year he went above and beyond. He fixed biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon and he baked some cinnamon rolls. Yummy!!

After gifts were exchanged and opened, we all relaxed for all of about 2 minutes. Then got ready and headed out to Christmas with my dad's side of the family about an hour and a half away. It was a surprise for my dad because he didn't know we were all (my brother, sister and her children and then my family) going. It was a fun surprise. My dad has 12 siblings, some of them are no longer with us. Now picture if all of the aunt's and uncle's have at least 2 children, most of them had 3 or 4. And almost all of those children now have children. Yes, it's a major family Christmas get together! What's impressive is that name tags aren't worn yet. We had a lot of fun visiting and getting to see family that we haven't seen for, well, awhile.

You may be wondering how Christmas works with so many people. I have to tell you, they are all EXTREMELY talented in one way or another. With such a big family you would think Christmas would be outrageous financially, right? No, because they use their talents to make gifts. I have aunts that can sew like nobodies business and uncles that can make just about anything out of wood or metal. One of my uncles can make all kinds of goodies with stained glass. And most of my cousins have followed in their parent's footsteps as far as talents. They do a dirty bingo (clean fun of course) game for the gift exchange and have so much fun with it. I enjoyed watching and taking pictures. Um, the main rule is that the gifts have to be made by hand. I can supervise a project, just can't make the project. The picture on the left is what my dad made, isn't it nice! Yes, after it was opened and the child was inside, the child had to go with it, he became part of the gift. And then the picture on the right is my dad holding a gift one of my uncle's (the one sitting right beside my dad) made, out of stained glass, it was beautiful!

I do have to introduce 2 of my favorite aunts. They gave me permission to use their real names too. They don't want to be called the 'BB' sisters, Bold and Beautiful of course (I won't tell you their versions). The one on my left is my Aunt Charlotte and the one on the right is my Aunt Wanda. They are very active women/hosts (hostesses?) during the Christmas get together. They also keep up with our blog.Every year my Aunt Wanda makes a quilt. I think it was last year that she made a family tree quilt. Oh my goodness was it amazing! This year her and my Aunt Charlotte made one for all of their brothers. Each leaf on the tree has a family member's name on it. The leaves at the base/ground of the tree have names of family member's that have passed on. The border of the quilt has family photos. It truly is amazing!













It's funny how my cousin and I, that are 3 months apart, had baby boys that are 3 months apart. Weird huh? He is adorable! But it's great because there are 3 new baby boys in our family this year! Funny how 2 of us were due on the same day and it wasn't planned that way.
On Friday we had Christmas with my dad and his wife. We all had a wonderful time. This is where the other new baby was at. That's my dad holding both babies.
I have attempted this post since Friday morning, my sign on clock at the bottom said 8:35 a.m.. We've been a bit busy, like most of you. I am finally making/taking time to add pictures and post this. Hope you enjoyed this novel!