Traditions and a little Chaos

I can't believe Christmas is already over. I spend so much time preparing...shopping, wrapping, decorating, cooking and all of a sudden, the celebrations have ended and I'm left with a barren tree, a house full of empty boxes, trash and dirty dishes. I know it is all worth it though when I see the big smiles on my children's faces.

Little Ann held tight to her list, making sure we followed the order of operations. Luckily she remembered our yearly traditions and had listed things in order anyway, so as we went with the flow of our Christmas Eve evening, it all naturally fell into place.

Christmas Eve has traditionally become the time we spend with my side of the family. My family isn't very big as I only have one sibling and once my grandparents passed away, everyone began to branch off establishing their own traditions with their immediate families. This year my parents weren't able to make it so it was just Pete, the kids and I, and my brother's family. Which believe me....with 3 boys and Big Dan to ag it all on..was all the chaos we needed.

The food was all delish as usual and once the tables were cleared and food put away, we began our highly competitive traditional game of Bingo. After Bingo, we managed to fulfill another of our family traditions being our family photo, but not without lots of grumbling.

You can't tell it though. We managed to get a smile out of everyone..surprisingly.

The present opening came after the picture and is usually what takes up the majority of the night. We are slow and it took Pete awhile to get used to our way of doing things. His family is so different than mine where presents are concerned. They waste no time with their opening, but we try to make it last by giving each person their own turn and full attention. These are a few of the happy faces from the night's gift giving.

For all you "non-country" folk out there, this is a three dimensional deer target. This is what the poor man asked for ya'll, so don't be giving me those eyebrows. Jeff Foxworthy may've said it best..."You might be a redneck if.....". lol.

I must say..one of the highlights of the night was listening to my brother's 3 year old repeat his newly learned phrase....."What in the heck?" as loudly as possible every single time someone opened a new gift. Look at his mouth and get a mental picture. Hi.lari.ous.

After all the gifts were opened and we all did trash patrol, the kids, once again followed Little Ann's schedule and took the telescope out to find Santa

all the while running in and out to track him on the Santa tracker as well. Hmmmm..is he close?

And where there are boys, you will most likely always find some level of chaos...especially with little (and big) boys who have just inhaled an extreme amount of sugar, opened lots of new toys, and are anxiously awaiting Santa. Needless to say, there was lots of this going on...

And thanks to Aunt Scrapper Mom who buys the most awesome gifts ever, a nerf gun, and a boy who subconsciously doesn't want to grow up (especially on Christmas), there was quite a lot of this too...

But Christmas Eve and all of our Christmas Eve traditions finally came to an end, Santa arrived at the home of Scrapper Mom and here are my sweet babies on Christmas morning. This was such a bittersweet morning for Big Dan. Does Santa still come see you after you graduate High School?

Awww... I must say, these moments are few and far between.

I won't bore you with the list of everything everyone got from Santa, but I will tell you, I think the Wii was the favorite. I haven't played the ping pong yet, but I'm ready to take any of them. I rock at ping pong!

The rest of Christmas day, we spent with Pete's family. The girls.....

Some of the guys...(I bet you'd never guess they were watching football, would you?)

And I know I have probably more than used my share of picture allotment for the day's post, but I just have to show you Pete's sister's tree. It was small, but adorable.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday!!!