It's All Over

Well, the holidays are over. We had such an amazing time. My parents, my grandmother and my two sisters and their families came to visit us for a while. It was so much fun!! They all rolled into town early morning on the 23rd and we made preparations for the big day. Christmas Eve was crazy trying to get things ready for the next day, we always make gleise (a german soup), we had a gingerbread house competition, and the kids get to open their one gift.

Every 'family' had their own house to do and great grandma was the judge. This was ours...it's not actually finished in this picture. It really doesn't matter, it wasn't really that pretty. Of course, Mom and Dad (mostly dad) had all these huge plans (they ended up with Shrek's swamp), Jess and Travis made the Rexburge temple, Manda and Terron did the house kit and it turned out really cute. John and I decided to just let the kids do whatever they wanted to do to it...you could totally tell. We lost the competition to the Temple, but the kids had a blast and everyone is already planning for next year.

Don't they look adorable in their new jammies?! They were all so ornery. Trying to get them to even sit next to each other and look at the camera....not fun. They LOVED having everyone in town, but their schedule and bedtime and normal routine went out the window. They were pretty excited for the visit from SANTA but they went to bed pretty easily.

This was the scene when they came down (at 5:30am...thanks Jess!!!)

They are four of the most spoiled kids on the planet!! The kids came in at ...ahem...5:30am. And then by the urging of the seven other adults in the house already situated around the tree downstairs, the kids kept coming up to bug us. I think we finally came down at 6:30...I don't really remember. We read the Christmas story out of Luke in the Bible and then the older kids got to pass out the loot.

The rest of their visit was filled with shopping, watching some TV, playing cards, eating and working on my house. My wonderful parents bought and installed a new ceiling fan in my kitchen with other lighting, a knob in my van and purchased a new bookshelf for my living room and helped me re-situate my house. It was such a wonderful visit from all of them. I miss my family dearly and I wish my children had the opportunity to see them more often. I am so grateful that they all travelled so far (my 90 year old grandma lives in Washington State) to visit us. It meant so much!! Thank you for visiting and for all that you do for us! We love you and we miss you already.