A Merry Christmas Indeed

Despite recent events earlier this December, we had a very blessed and Merry Christmas.

Our family celebrations and events begin on Christmas Eve. After arriving an hour prior to mass and sitting through it at St. Andrews, we headed to Grandmama's for Christmas Eve dinner as we always have.

No longer the kids, we got to watch the kids open and exchange gifts. Gracie, Rachel, Hailey, and Aleesya played nicely and enjoyed spending the evening together.

We headed home after a nice evening to watch the Christmas Story in our 'jamas together. B and I enjoyed spending the time together and we enjoyed the quiet while we could. We finished packing for NC and getting ready for the morning, crawled into bed, and watched TBS until we fell asleep.

Not 3 hours later.... B got up. I, hearing him, got up to use the bathroom (thanks kid) and spent what felt like an hour trying to fall back asleep. B, on the other hand, did not fall back asleep and went into the family room not to disturb me.

Then...3 hours later, I heard a, "Baby, get up." And it was 6 am. Yep, we do Christmas early. I got up and we fixed some coffee, eyeing the snow falling outside. We put some Christmas music on and opened our gifts from each other. Quickly cleaning up, we got ready to head to Mom and Dad's to do Christmas with the family.

After a spread of a breakfast (Ham, Eggs, Fruit salad, hashbrowns, biscuits, muffins, yummy Christmas bread, gravy, OJ, coffee...), we finally attempted to tackle the living room full of presents. We obviously go a little overboard with gifts to each other. You can't even see them all in the picture. Below are Emily, Gracie, and Dad "playing" beach.

Emily did some sorting. Here's her getting under the tree to fish out gifts.

Gracie was given a princess outfit set from her Great Aunt and Uncle. Here she is as sleeping beauty, or as she says, "sweeping booty."

Once we finished the gift giving and cleand up...(only about 2 1/2 hours later), B and I headed out to NC to visit his grandparents and see his parents. Here is a picture of the drive there with the snow and the front of the car, frozen over. License plate was not visible. We spent a few days visiting and relaxing before heading back to Salem.

Merry Christmas!