Christmas Recap

Kamryn with her cousin at our Shingleton Family gathering Christmas night.

My siblings all meet at my parent's house on Christmas night. We had an easy dinner of sub sandwiches and all sorts of yummy sides. Then the cousins exchanged their presents (we draw names every year) and then siblings exchanged their presents (we just rotate down each year) and then gave presents to our parents. It was a pretty mellow evening and we all enjoyed the visiting.

Taylor with his Nano iPod.
He received a combined birthday/Christmas present from his parents' this year. Now if we can just get our computer up to speed to recognize it. There's always a present that has problems.

Kamryn showing off her new princess nightgown.

Jared showing off his superheros jammies.

Taylor excited to open a present from his grandparents.
It was a basketball set for his room.

Jared showing off the cool football shirt he got in his stocking from Santa.

Taylor in his new "moon" chair that Santa brought.

Justin and Brooke on Christmas morning sitting by what Santa brought them.

We had a great Christmas. Everyone finally was up about 9:30 except for Justin and we all went down to wake him up. We always take our time on Christmas and spread out the opening for as long as possible. Each of the kids take turns opening what Santa brought them and then we move on to what each person got for members of the family.
Paul's parents and my parents joined us for brunch and some more present opening. And then Paul's sister's family joined us during the afternoon. It was a very kickback day and very enjoyable.
At 4:00 when we were getting ready to go over to my parents and loading up presents to take over there the kids noticed we still hadn't opened some big presents that were to our family from their dad. Everyone had a present to open and it was a new home theater system for our family room downstairs. It even included a big screen flat plasma tv. The kids were very excited about that and very surprised. We've enjoyed watching a few movies on it and the kids have fun playing their video games on the big screen. Paul really has been enjoying the new stereo and listening to good music and watching his favorite concerts.
The day after Christmas is my favorite - we stayed home all day and just enjoyed all the new toys. Most of us stayed in our jammies all day. I love just hanging out with the fam and spending time together. It was nice to be able to stay in all day while the snow piled up outside. We ended up getting over a foot of new snow.