Christmas Highlights

Since it's a few weeks after Christmas, I'll just give you the highlights.

A few days before Christmas, we hosted our 2nd Annual Cookie Decorating party with some friends. We had invited 4 of my friends and their 11 children over to decorate Christmas cookies. It turned out that most of them were sick that day and we only ended up with one friend and kids over for cookies. After helping a table full of small children with icing and sprinkles, I looked at Windy and asked "Where would we have put 8 more children for this??" We had lots of fun making Christmas trees stacked out of sugar cookies and eating all of them. Since I had prepared enough cookies for lots of people, we had plenty to share.

Here's our cute little reindeer! She loved to crawl all over the house with these on.
On Christmas Eve, Catherine and Will wanted to sleep together so that they could get up at the same time on Christmas morning for Santa. We told them they needed to stay in her room until 7am and we would come get them. And they actually did! I don't think we have many more years of being able to contain them this easily.
Jay likes to torture them and make them sit at the top of the stairs and wait to come down. We get out the video camera and make a big event of it. They think this is hilarious and kept trying to sneak a look through the banisters.
The highlight of the Christmas gifts was Will's weedeater. He was sooo excited that he went out at 7:15am in his pajamas to trim the yard.
Anna didn't wake up for Christmas until around 8am. Catherine and Will had so much fun showing her her presents and toys. She loves this little rocking giraffe.
On Christmas afternoon we headed to my dad's house. It gets a little packed in there with 12 adults and 8 children, but we had lots of fun. It started to snow that night and when we woke up the next morning, everything was covered with snow.
So we got in the car and drove in the snow all the way to WV. We had originally planned to leave that afternoon and mostly drive at night, but didn't want to do that in the bad weather. There were a few spots it was a little tricky driving, but not too bad. The kids did great and we managed to only stop once in 7 hours. We didn't tell Jay's parents that we were coming early, so they were very surprised when we knocked on the door and sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." The next morning the guys took Catherine and Will sledding and had lots of fun.
On Tuesday after Christmas we opened presents with the Hatten's. Will loved his new truck with a crane. All of the kids had so much fun opening presents. They are at a really fun age to watch their excitement. They also got really excited about the presents we were giving to other people and of course, offered to help them unwrap those too.
So those are the highlights...I may have a few more pics to share of our time with the cousins too.