happy birthday jesus, a bit belated.

on christmas eve (i know, i'm so behind!), after attending a short family-friendly church service, chris and i went with my sister to her mom and stepdad's house. [side note - for those of you who don't know, my sister and i are half sisters. we have the same dad, but her mom lives in indiana. my sister also has a brother and three sisters unrelated to me. we joke that if we try to explain it to people, we have to use a whiteboard and draw the family trees.]

so. we spent christmas eve with my sister's family. as i mentioned, she has four siblings, almost all of whom have kids. so with everyone there to celebrate, it was a lot of people, and a lot of kids in one house. we enjoyed a great mexican potluck (enchiladas = yum), and laughed a lot as we watched the kids tear into their presents (see pic below). did i mention there were a lot of kids?

after the kids were corraled downstairs to play with their new treasures, the adults enjoyed a gift exchange - the fun kind where you can steal other people's presents. it was a ton of fun. everyone was fighting over a bottle of champagne with champagne flutes, and a fuzzy fleece throw blanket. we forgot to limit the number of steals per present, so it became quite a lenghty exchange. i got lucky and went home with the movie elf, which was on my christmas wish list anyways.

after the big family christmas eve party, we headed down the icy road back to my sister's. even though it was getting late, we held my sister's family tradition of opening presents on christmas eve. the kids were really excited, and raced around moving the presents from under the tree into piles in front of each person. they were adorable! present-opening was fun (why wouldn't it be?), and the kids kept offering to "help" unwrap our presents.

 

the next morning, we opened stockings and had a big, delicious breakfast. the kids spent the day playing with their new toys. okay, i did too. we even got to video-chat with my parents, brothers, and grandmas. although the kids only had the attention span to talk for about 20 minutes, it was fun to talk to and see the whole family on christmas day. it was a great day!