3 weeks on Christmas

Christmas is over, the New Year is here, our tree is sitting in the back yard waiting for a Spring time bon fire and I am finally sitting down to write about our Christmas, or shall I say Christmases.  

Our first Christmas was at Matt's sister's home.  It was the week before Christmas and Wesley called it "the little christmas".   The tree was beautiful and the food delicious.

 

The kids were excited about their gifts and happy spend time with not only Grandma and Grampy but Aunt Judy, Uncle Bill, Jeremy, Uncle Jordan and Aunt Marisa.  They are the only kids out of the bunch and enjoyed all the attention.  

Next was on early morning Christmas complete with Pioneer Woman cinnamon buns.  It was a great morning I was thrilled to be able to capture some of the moments on my new video camera.

We were able to talk to Aunt Britty while we opened gifts from her and Uncle Brent.

Later that day we drove to Aunt Faith's and crashed their Christmas dinner.  We weren't the only crashers.   A foursome of Amish folks joined our fun!

 

They brought gifts wrapped in parchment paper that looked more like packages of fresh cut meat than home made Christmas gifts.  It was great fun playing the traditional Christmas gift game with them. 

Charlie was passed around like a drooling hot potato while Wesley played with all the Christmas candy poopers (an astonishing new device to the Amish).   

Then it was home where my sister Jill and her new fiance Dan came to visit.

Lastly we drove 6 hours to spend New Year's weekend with my mom, Grandan, Kirstie (who moved back from Texas) Zach, Nick, Nate and Angie.   We celebrated with gifts, a delicious dinner, bon fire, coffee and hot cocoa.   My mom made an awesome afghan for Matt and the kids all got pillow pets something the two older kids had been really wanting. 

We spread our Christmas out over 3 weeks and it was a wonderful blur of activities.  We have so much to be thankful for and many great memories.   One of my favorite moments is when Wes asked if we were going to give Jesus a birthday cake.