Our first Christmas of December 2010, Part 1

This past weekend was full of fabulous new memories.  Everyone gathered together... it's that new season of life with adult kids who come home for the holidays.  And I love it!  Every bed filled.  Chatter at all hours.  Sleepy moments when you really don't mind being tired because you are so full of love for each person.

Bek arrived with Lily, Nick's daughter.  Now, Bek has no patience.  Many who know her personally agree... she is all energy and liveliness.  This year she bought gifts for each of the siblings and simply could not wait to hand them out.  Here's a slide show of Friday night's fun!  (I had to pick the sparkling, dancing snowflakes... even though we have no snow... they just seem to fit the festive mood.)

I wowed the children with breakfast.  Well, I am pretending about that part.  What really happened was I woke and realized that all these people wanted to eat and I didn't want each of them rustling it up for themselves, so I made abelskivers (pancake puffs), bacon and buscuits.  It wasn't my favorite offering, but it worked.   It's hard to capture great pics when people are eating, but I wanted to show what it looked like!  They're all so cute sitting down around the table together!

Then us girls had to head out for some morning shopping. 

The next great experience was making treats.  I had seen pictures of these cute snacks somewhere on line - square pretzels with kisses on top, put it warm oven to soften, then poke m&ms on top. I am not sure that the cuteness factor equals the effort factor, however, the children had a great time making them.  So, it was worth it.

It was great to see Julie sporting a new look!
This year I made mention of Scott's dad dressing as Santa at the party.  I had grand visions of us sitting around tables, playing games and Santa passing out party favors and prizes to game winners.  We didn't actually do that, though.  The idea morphed into Santa having pictures with the little ones... and bigger ones... and he was an adorable Santa.   About an hour before our guests were to arrive, Nathan helped me take some test pictures and I played with the settings on my camera a bit.  This was my favorite test picture... I like the lights, shadows, ripples of his shirt...