For the first time in many years, the whole family was together for Christmas. It was wonderful! We made sure to get a family picture too!
We always enjoy our time with Aunt Barb & Uncle Willy
Grammy put together some fun games - including this candy cane relay game. Leave it to Teri to find the loophole, lol!
Grammy & Kaitee worked on the Christmas pageant this year. It was very well done, as always.
Then we moved on to the talent portion of the evening...
Will wrote a skit about the different types of people who open presents (the slow opener who doesn't tear the paper, the kid who always gets socks/underwear, the kid who guesses their gift without opening it, etc). It was a cute idea and he did a great job of putting it together.
Alex played her flute
Kayla & Emma sang a song
Judah shared some "Dad Jokes" - had us all laughing
And Kaitee rewrote "Copacabana (At the Copa)" - making it a Christmas classic!
We continued our evening together with gifts, eating and lots of laughter. Our time together is never enough...
We finished our evening watching Elf and eating Whitey's - pretty nice way to close out Christmas 2019!
Us girls were blessed to find an open evening and head out for dinner. Girl's Night Out with these ladies - pretty special!
Our time together came & went too quickly. We definitely need to be intentional about setting time aside to be together now that Teri's family is in Indiana.
Christmas Morning - I woke up to Will talking in the main room. I heard him say, "Alexa? Turn on Plug 1 (Christmas Tree)" followed by "Alexa? Turn on quiet Christmas music". It was a wonderful treat to wake up to!
Soon, everyone was up and ready to open gifts.
We seem to be going more and more simple as the kids get older. None of the kids had a real list of things they wanted this year, so we told them they would get cash. While that is wonderful (and easy) for me, I hate not having anything for them to open on Christmas morning. We love to have some surprises too.
I continued my Cub theme gifts for each of them - Obvious Shirts with Cub "logos".
I love to recycle boxes that I already have when wrapping gifts. Here are a few of the kids, loving their gift boxes.
With their cash, I included a $10 gift card for 7-eleven (they visit our local one often). Of course, I wouldn't just wrap the money and gift card. I find the biggest box possible and wrap the money in lots of towels, trying to throw off the kids. Works every time!
The last gift was a total surprise for all of the kids. I found an amazing deal on new tablets for them. They don't use them often - mainly when we travel. Great Grandma Phyllis purchased the kids Kindles a few years ago. As we all know, a few years makes things obsolete. The old Kindles were short on space and the batteries were short on time. It was time. I had everyone open their gifts - one at a time - and peek in the box but not share what was inside.
Alex hadn't seen her gift yet - she was a bit tired of having to dig through towels for everything she opened, ha!
A wonderful Christmas morning! We ended our morning with breakfast - monkey bread and egg casserole. Time to pack up and head over to celebrate Christmas with the Barman Family.
