our Christmas vacation (part one)

We were only able to go home for the weekend (Thurs to Monday) of Christmas this year.  Which is quite an adjustment from when Dan has been in school the last 3 years and had a month or more time off from school.  But we are really happy he has a job anyway. :)  It’s worth it.

Even though we were only there for 3 full days we had PLENTY of fun!  And I managed to take hundreds of pictures, I hope I can narrow it down enough for the casual reader to not get annoyed and enough for the rest of you! 

Josh’s Birthday Party

When we arrived at my parent’s Thursday night we had a party waiting for us!  Including pizza from Dan’s favorite place, The Pie.  It was wonderful to see almost (Joni was out of town) everyone in my family right away.  Mom even snuck (is that a word?) in a matching shirt family photo!  Good times.

Both of my girls love their aunt Stephanie very much, she played pretend dogs with Sophie and taught Tessa to button and un-button her sweater.  She’s a sweet heart.

Sydney and Dean, my Houston niece and nephew.  I hadn’t seen them since last summer!  They have both grown up a lot.  Love ‘em to pieces!!

Christmas Eve

We were with my family for Christmas Eve (and then went and stayed with Dan’s family Christmas afternoon and Sunday) and we had a pretty relaxing day.  I went out on a long run in the morning, I had James and Jonathan with me for a bit until they were through and then enjoyed the time to myself in seeing my old stomping grounds.  In the late morning all of the guys went out to an indoor go-cart race track thing.  I guess they are pretty fast, like 35 mph I think.  They all had a good time and were sore the next day.  If you ask Dan, he was the best, but no one else seemed to think so. :)  I couldn’t part with my camera for Dan to take to the race track, so sorry no pictures of that (although I think James took some).  The girls had ideas of going out to a movie… but the kids’ nap schedules were too far off and we ended up just sitting around, talking and playing with the kids who were up.  (Which is our favorite anyway.)

Dean playing with a fire truck, he loves anything with wheels.  My sister Jenny is so beautiful, I couldn’t resist putting up this picture, I like it.

In the early evening we headed over to my Grandma and Grandpa Ellis’ for our annual Christmas Eve party.  There’s no mistaking that classic wood paneling in the basement, don’t know if I really had to explain where we were. :)  We ate food, did the same chimes we’ve been playing since I was a baby and recited the story of Christ’s birth from the Bible.  Grandma knows it by heart and I think she is surprised every year that we don’t all know it too.  Her mind is sharper in her 70’s than mine is in my 20’s!

Jonathan was nice enough to take this photo for us, thank you!  Tessa and my little cousin Emily had a great time playing on the stairs that night.

My cousin Joe with his son Ezra learning the chimes.  Poor Dean HATED the chimes and cried like I’ve never seen before.  This picture must have been taken before the chimes came out.

Sophie watching for her chime number to come up.  My mom brought gifts for all her grandchildren to the party so they wouldn’t feel left out.  My girls got Zhu zhu pets.  Tessa was pretty scared of hers, so we put her on the table with it to watch her squirm, mean I know.  But it was funny.  She’s pants-less because her pants got wet and she won’t tolerate that, so they were in the dryer until it was time to go.

Sophie thought her pet was pretty cute but when we got home from the party she discovered that Uncle Jonathan’s nerf gun is really fun!  She shot at the family pictures on Grandma’s wall with surprising accuracy.  She’d call out the name of who she was targeting and hit them most the time. Cute how excited she got, she definitely has a tom-boy side to her.