Christmas 2016

We had another wonderful Christmas!  Since Christmas was on Sunday this year, it was a little tricky to arrange our annual activities around church.  On Saturday (Christmas Eve), we ate our traditional Christmas breakfast at my parent's house.   

 Nanny and Cooper

Blue eyed boys.

Later that evening, we had the Cowart/Olk Christmas dinner at Uncle Jordan and Aunt Katie house.  For dinner we enjoyed taco soup and afterwards had a great time playing the family white elephant game.  I ended up with four lotto tickets (won $15) and Lucky Goat coffee but the real winner was Aunt Katie.  She ended up with the box of chocolates with $50 hidden in the wrapper (Nanny's gift).  It's safe to say Nanny went over the $10 recommendation. 

 Christmas Eve!

  Dad ended up getting one of our gifts.  He drew #1 so he had the prime position to snag a good gift.  He opened ours first, which was a XXL t shirt with a screen print of Kate's Kindergarten class picture.  We accidentally received it when I placed my order back in the Spring and I knew I had to save it for the white elephant gift exchange this year.  The only other gift dad was interested was my coffee and lotto tickets (which had been locked since I was the second steal) and he didn't know about the money in the chocolate wrappers, so he kept his beautiful t shirt. :)

 We had a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Before the kids went to bed, we put out cookies and milk for Santa.

 Ready for Santa!

Before the kids went to bed, we let them open the gifts from mommy and daddy.  They were excited about the board games and movie.

On Christmas morning, the kids were excited to see this... 

 I filmed most of them opening gifts and didn't take any pictures but I did take a couple pictures of what they got: 

 After gifts, we quickly got ready and went to church.  After church, we went over to my parent's to open gifts with them!  Since we were fixing a big dinner at our house that night, Gigi fixed us a light lunch complete with melted ham sandwiches, fruit, chips and Christmas cookies! Again, I didn't take any pictures while we were opening but I managed to get a family picture.  Poor Gigi was really sick so we tried to keep a safe distance so we didn't get sick (thus the reason for no extended family pictures).

  Christmas afternoon, Mimi and Papa came over aroudn 2:00 to open gifts and spend some time with us before the rest of the family joined us later that evening for dinner.  

This year, we ate at 5:00 since we were leaving for Texas later that night.  It wasn't going to work out for us to visit at Spring Break like last year (Melanie and Erin are going to New York!) so Justin and I thought it would be fun to go after Christmas!  

We had a wonderful Christmas meal and the Boerstler family joined us this year (Kyle, Hannah, Ruby and Michael)!  It's always to fun to have friends join us  Everyone brought a couple side dishes to complement our Boston Butt (something I ordered at Thanksgiving and froze until Christmas - delicious!).  Justin and I had the car packed so as soon as our last guest left around 7, we jumped in the car and hit the road. 

We had another wonderful Christmas full of friends, family and love.  

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!