Christmas Eve and Day

Our Christmas Eve tradition is to go to Holton to spend it with Darin's extended family at his Nana's house.   The food was yummy and the company was even better.  

At Nana's house, after our big dinner upstairs we head to the basement for dessert and presents.  Of course Nolan found the cookies that Gramma made.  Yum!!

Maya got this cute pink backpack and kept it on during the rest of present-opening time.  Here she is giving Nana a big hug for her presents.  

Of course we can't forget to feed Teddy!  Maya is telling Gramma all about how hungry Teddy is and how to feed him.  

A big hit of the night was the Hungry Hungry Hippo game from Nana.  We still play it almost every day.  Here Darin is playing it with Maya, Nolan and Ethan.  

After a late-night drive home, we woke the kids up to show them that we left some cookies for Santa.  They were less than thrilled that night but in the morning they were pretty excited to see that Santa ate them all and drank the milk!

Here are Santa's gifts and stockings!  When the kids woke up on Christmas morning, this is where we started.

 The kids had a ton of fun opening up their stockings.  There is just something exciting about sticking your arm shoulder deep in a sock that just brings on the smiles!

And of course I had to include a picture of sissy with her stocking.

Maya told us over and over that she wanted Santa to bring her a Hello Kitty pillow and blanket.  VOILA!  Santa came through.  The pink blanket has a Hello Kitty embroidered on it at the bottom.  

Plenty of Christmas spirit--spread the love!!

The aftermath of the Santa gifts....

Next we had breakfast and then moved onto the presents under the tree!  The kids got some neat shirts and tie-dyed socks from Papa and Nonnie to show off.

And that afternoon, the Dills came over for Christmas night.  We opened more presents, ate lots of yummy food and played lots of games.  This was such a cute moment between Gwyn and Nolan.  They are "playing" a new game together and having fun organizing these tiles into categories.

One cute picture that the guys got was of all 4 kids playing in the bathroom sink.  They disappeared at one point and we couldn't figure out what they were doing.  It turns out that Nolan got some little sponge dinosaurs for Christmas and and the kids had crammed themselves in the bathroom and were filling the sink with water and splashing around with the dinos.  So cute!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas too!!  (See how we can hug without even touching bodies?  My suggestion was for them to hug and this is what they did!  Ha!!)