a merryhappy christmasnewyearsCbirthday...

As our extended family has grown, our holiday celebrations have had to evolve with the addition of new sisters and brothers by marriage and their family celebrations, new children and the challenges of traveling, and the overall desire to spend time with all our loved ones without a ton of pressure or stress on multiple parties.  This is such a great process because it means there are more people to love in our family!  So this is what our holiday plans have looked like for the past couple of years and they have seemed to work really well.  My brother's wife Amy's family lives in Washington state, so their family flies there to celebrate one holiday per year, switching between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So on the opposite holiday, we celebrate with the my family.  That means on the holiday that Marcus and Amy are in WA, we celebrate with Steve's family.  But his sister-in-law Christy's family is always able to be together on Christmas, as well as his brother-in-law Colyn's family.  So we celebrate Thanksgiving with Steve's family on Thanksgiving, but we celebrate Christmas on New Year's to allow Christy & Colyn to be with their families.  And long store short (!!), since we celebrated Thanksgiving with the my family on the farm, we had Christmas Day at home with just the 6 of us, and then celebrated Christmas with the Steve's family over New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Christy and I offered to host the festivities this year - with New Year's Eve at her house and New Year's Day at our house since that is also Carsten's birthday.

We all arrived at Jeff and Christy's warm and cozy home around suppertime, and had delicious chili with all the fixings (corn bread, noodles, cheese, sour cream, onions, etc).  The kids ate first...

...then they ran off to play while the adults ate and visited.

Pretty soon though, the kids were bugging us: "WHEN IS CHRISTMAS!"  So we gathered in the living room around the pile of presents.  Kaatje sorted them into piles for all the cousins, and then each kid took a turn opening one presesnt.

Shields and swords for each of the kids made by Uncle Jeff were a big hit, as well as lots of legos from Papa and Aahma and Uncle Colyn and Auntie Melanie.

After the kids' presents were all opened, the adults took a turn.  We each brought a game that we thought looked great and didn't own and then took turns picking one of the wrapped gifts for a round, then went around again and could choose to "steal" one of the opened games, including the one that you brought!  Very fun and bonus, we had a lot of new games to play together for the next couple of days!

We did not stay until midnight to ring in the 2014 with everyone.  As you can see, by 9:30 our kids were starting to turn into pumpkins. =)

Our table the next morning, holding some of the handmade lovlies from Melanie, Christy and Mom B - these little things were some of my favorite gifts for all the kids!

When the kids woke up, C first told me "I am a whole hand now, Momma!", then they asked for their shields and swords.

Ready for combat!  (full disclosure, while Jeff and Christy usually like to surprise us with the gifts they make for the kids, they did ask beforehand whether or not they could give us short swords with the shields.  We said yes, they will just get taken away if not used properly!)

Our kids had a full night of sleep so they were up bright and early, but the rest of us slowly got up and ready and arrived at our house for a late brunch of egg dishes, fruit, and Christy's cinnamon rolls.  Pippin got to come and celebrate with us too! (he didn't get any cinnamon rolls though)

After a late breakfast, the kids ran off to play and we got out the games!  Here is Jeff and Christy's new game, 7 Wonders.  We also played Mom and Dad's new game, the infamous Horse Racing Game made by Colyn, and Melanie and Colyn's new game Roll through the Ages.  And got New Year's dinner of ham and mashed potatoes and squash ready there too.  I wanted to get a photo of us all at the dinner table together, but alas, did not.  Didn't get a group family photo either, but trust me, we were all there, we all ate well, and had a lot of fun together!

After dinner there was legos to be put together, knitting to be done, cars to be watched out the window, visiting and laughing to enjoy...

piano to be played...(the kids played too)

video games to be played/watched (these boys LOVE their big cousin!)

ball to be played with Papa...

AND A BIRTHDAY TO CELEBRATE!  I can't believe this sweet boy is "one whole hand."  He is our peaceful patient boy who loves his siblings, loves to play games, and loves nature - we are excited to see what FIVE brings for him (although the thought of him going off to school already?  crazy.)  He picked a chocolate cake with white frosting and blue letters.  We made it together, and while I am no cake decorator like my lovely sister-in-law Jessica, we did pretty good (thankfully putting the candles at the top hid my mistake of starting too low on the cake!)

Before we ate cake though, we opened presents!  He loved his gifts...

...especially his Scaredy Squirrel books!  This was from Papa and Aahma along with a card game, he got legos from Kaatje and Greta, and a new big box of colors from Melanie and Colyn, and our gifts for him this year were skateboarding and sports guys (want - he kept asking for a real skateboard, but that will have to wait a few years), a play cash register (need - ok, this really wasn't a need, but it will be so much fun for him and all the kids), an orange VW bug shirt (wear), and Saredy Squirrel has a birthday party (read).

I know this is blurry, but I have to show you - look at this sweet boy just two years ago...

And look at him now on the same stool!  Oh we love you, big boy! 
We all enjoyed cake and ice cream, then snacks, popcorn, apples, a movie for the kids and a round of Pandemic (our new game!) before everyone left to head home.

(Henry thought he should go too.)  

Merry Happy Christmas New Year's Carsten's Birthday EVERYONE!!!!!

PS.  If you are intrigued, give us a call and read this sentence outloud:  "Oh no, they cancelled the boat show!"  =)