A Very Merry Christmas!

Wow.  I can't believe Christmas is over already!  It went by so fast!  What a fun time we had, though!  Greg's parents arrived here Wednesday afternoon and we had a very relaxing night.  I made dinner and we just hung out at our house.  Thursday, Greg had to work, but I took the day off and did a little last minute shopping and then we all (me, Greg, Bill, Janis, Mom, Sam, Grandma & Dad) went to Otani for dinner.  It is our favorite restaurant in the area and we had never taken Greg's parents there before, so we had a wonderful dinner filled with lots of laughs - mostly provided by Bill.  Friday, I ran a couple errands and prepared some of the sides for Christmas dinner in the hopes of getting dinner ready at a decent hour on Christmas day - which didn't exactly happen.

Christmas morning, we got up and ready and headed over to my dad's house to spend a few hours with the Shubert family.

We had a nice lunch and opened up some presents and chatted for a little while before it was time to head back to my house to get ready for everyone to arrive.

Shortly after we got back to our house, the whole crew arrived and the present madness began!  Dad missed out on the group shots because he didn't come over until later.

So much for Secret Santa...

Since Sam is our personal auto mechanic and never lets us pay for anything, we always give him a thank you gift at Christmas to thank him for all of the time and effort he puts in to making sure our cars are always running properly. 

We are officially a Droid family now...I got a Droid 2 for my Dad, my Dad got a Droid X for Greg and a Droid 2 for me, I got a Droid 2 for my mom, and Sam got a Droid 2 for himself.  I've had the original Droid for a year now and it was great - but they made some much needed improvements with the Droid 2.

I also made my annual calendars for everyone along with a photo mug.  I had a lot of great pictures to choose from this year!!

We initiated Secret Santa a couple years ago to try and stop the madness, but some people - MOM - do not like to abide by the rules.  I didn't exactly follow the rules this year either.  After all of the presents were opened, my mom pulled these out.

She sure put my puny little stockings to shame.  Although, I am still proud of myself for sewing everyone's name on them.

After we opened all of the presents, it was time to get dinner ready - which I didn't plan for very well.  It was a combination of starting everything so late, the amount of food we made and the amount of items that needed to go in the oven that all led to a very late dinner.  It would have gone much better if I had a second oven, but at least everything turned out pretty good...even if it was much later than I had hoped.

Last weekend, Mom, Grandma and I had our annual cookie baking day (I love our traditions) and we made a TON of cookies!  This picture is missing about 60 bars.

Greg also made his apple pies and we had some cupcakes.

I also made up a few prizes to give away with some gift cards.  One went to the person that could guess the most Secret Santas correctly - which went to mom.  The others were Bingo prizes - yes - we played Bingo after dinner and it was a lot of fun!  After I ran out of prizes, everyone still wanted to play, so each game everyone would put a dollar each into the pot and the winner took all.

We had such a wonderful holiday and we are so lucky to have such a wonderful family!  Merry Christmas everyone!!