FA LA LA LA LA!!!!

Christmas this year was so much fun! I love the traditions that come from both sides of our families. My families traditions begin on Christmas Eve. When we were little my parents would get us up really early, and we would spend the entire day doing a whole bunch of activities so by the time bedtime rolled around we were exhausted and went straight to sleep. This tradition has been continued on to include the grandkids and friends that want to join :). A fun tradition that has come from Chad's side of the family is on Christmas Eve every year the "Elves" bring you new PJ's for Christmas, but the Elves don't only bring them, but they hide them and the girls have to find their PJ's. The girls LOVE looking for their jammies and being able to wear them. Christmas day has always consisted of opening up gifts and then heading out to visit family. I love being able to visit and give gifts! It really is a special time of year. Here are a few (okay, a LOT) of pictures of our Christmas adventure this year!

Christmas Eve: We start the day with breakfast. We ended up having a little bit of a breakfast fiasco this year and we weren't able to start breakfast till around 9:30am instead of 8:30am. Here is our crowd of 19:

Pemberlynn was REALLY hungry!
Gotta love the kids menu that comes with crayons :)
After breakfast it was off to the bounce house..........

This is Chad doing jumping jacks.....HA HA HA!
A train? Drew, McKinzley, and Kirstin
Can't you just tell that they are about to cause mayhem?


After the bounce house everyone came back to our house and watched the movie Despicable Me, followed by some snacks and games. One of the games that we played was UNO. We played the "Normal" way for a little while and then Kirstin and I decided that we needed to show my family how to play with the "Hoyt" rules! It was a blast!..........And, of course Christmas Eve wouldn't be complete without a surprise visit from the big guy!!
After Santa left with the reindeer we had a scrumptious dinner of soup in bread bowls, salad, tater skins, and brownie sundaes.

I just couldn't pass this picture up! TWINNERS!!! So cute!
After dinner we had a program and the kids put together the manger scene throughout the story.
CHIMES!!!! Christmas Eve just wouldn't be the same if we didn't play the chimes. It is always interesting :)
Jammies from the "Elves"!!! (We were starting to get into meltdown mode at this point)
Christmas Day: Started out bright and early at 6:00am with stockings.....

Up the stairs we come to see what Santa left
Yippee!!! He came!!

For some odd reason Oaklee is in LOVE with Luigi



This picture is out in the garage when the girls saw that they got a trampoline.
After we cleaned up, ate breakfast and got ready we headed out to visit Chad's family. David and Paige invited everyone over to their house for lunch, games, gifts, and LOTS of laughs!! We had a HUGE group there! Even two of Chad's uncles and their families joined the party. We played a huge game of PictureMan, and I REALLY wish I would have taken a picture because the girls KILLED the boys in that game!! I think the final score was 15 to 6??? It was a great time! We had a

fantastic lunch of ham, cheesy potatoes, jello salad, broccoli, and lots of treats. After dinner we opened presents and played games the rest of the night!

Kids table

Drew and Brexlyn hung out the ENTIRE weekend! If Drew was there, Brexlyn was with him :)
Opening gifts......

Cousins playing
This was right before we were leaving. I just thought that this picture was really funny :)

Like I said earlier, Christmas was SO much fun this year!! Thank you to everyone that joined us on our Christmas Eve excursion, and thank you David and Paige for inviting us to your home and throwing a GREAT party!! I also want to thank everyone that gave gifts to my girls and Chad and I, you were all very generous! Thanks to both sides of the family that were involved with making our Christmas special this year! We love you guys!

I can't wait for this next year to come! SO many changes on the way, but I can't wait!! Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year!!!