A Christmas Story with Pictures

We left town as soon as school was over on Wednesday because of the predicted bad weather. We hit the nasty weather about an hour east of my parents house, making the driving difficult and slow but we made it safe and sound. Christmas Eve the boys spent the morning playing outside.

All the festivities started right after the afternoon Christmas Eve mass. My sisters made it home with their families and my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jack's family joined ours for the good food and fun.

Shortly after eating the music and dancing started.

Megan and Meredith enjoyed the action...

As well as, Erik and Andy.
My Christmas puppy rang his bell until... Santa joined the party to hand out a few gifts early.

Santa gave Cullen a pep talk about getting his stitches out the next day.

Family pictures were taken before the kids were put in bed for the night. (Geremu still doesn't seem to like Santa- he's a bit afraid of him.) The adults stayed up playing the dice game and doing the adult gifts only to wake up early the next morning to Katie yelling, "This is my worst nightmare" after she found out Curtis had the flu. So the kids opened their gifts...

and ate breakfast while enjoying their gifts.

Then Katie's family packed up and headed out (slippery roads and all) around 9 am.

Katie was so disappointed she was leaving but Johnny didn't seem to care one way or another that their trip was cut short. He got his guitar and Packers gear from Santa and left the house with his hand raised in victory. The house was cleaned from top to bottom by 10:15ish with everyone helping and Kyle was left wondering how, "Katie's family got so lucky" that they got to leave early.

Meredith however was excited she got to spend more time with me!

The boys spent the day playing with their new gifts and Cullen got his stitches removed by Kyle's brother.

It was a good Christmas.