Some Good Old Fashion Family Time 12-28-09

This Christmas will be remembered as the one that included LOTS of family time. Usually it is all so rushed...go from one house to another to another, to get in ALL of the get togethers. But this year, three of the get-togethers were held before Christmas. This made for the first 3 weeks of December to be very busy, but after Christmas, we could just sit back and relax.The days coming up to Christmas were filled with homemade cinnamon role baking and Christmas cookie decorating. Christmas Eve was spent with Jonathan's family. We actually spent the night before there and celebrated Christmas on the Eve...we had delicious food, good company and the cousins LOVED playing together. That night we went to my mom's and spent Christmas day with her (the picture from Christmas morning is at my mom's and remember...there were LOTS of us...so that explains all the presents  ). We had planned on coming home that night, but ended up staying there one more night because we were enjoying just relaxing and shooting the breeze with my parents. In fact, we stayed up until 1am Christmas night (despite being SO tired) chatting away...something we rarely get to do. We were going to go home the 26th but ended up staying ANOTHER night as Jon and I and my sister decided to go to a movie and play around like teenagers. So fun. We really had a wonderful Christmas. And lest you wonder about my children...well, they were in their element. The night that we went to a movie, my mom kept the kids and when we came home, Noah grabbed my hand and showed me the obstacle course Grandma had built for him. She had strung ribbon from one end of the room to another, furniture to furniture throughout her entire "formal" living room. The kids had to crawl under or jump over to get through it...thus making it the funnest game ever. My mom never ceases to amaze me...

We made it home yesterday afternoon. It took me most of the day to pick up and put stuff away. By evening it was snowing beautifully so we decided to pile into the car and go sledding. We drove a short distance, walked a short ways through the woods and found the most amazing sledding hill EVER. I wish you could have seen Landon's face...he couldn't believe it was so big and he got to go down it! Even Noah went down...and loved every single second of it. It was a beautiful night...one of those random things you decide to do that you won't ever forget....it was that much fun!

Today I cleaned out closets. Doesn't sound like much, but I didn't get a shower until 3pm, which tells you what shape my closets were in  Jonathan is back in the garage fixing yet another broken part on the Taurus. I think tonight we will make some chinese food and have a family video game night...I know a couple of boys that will eat that right up!