Christmas is here!

"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree:  the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other."  ~Burton Hillis


We had the Hardcastle family dinner on the 23rd since Dustin had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas :(.  We have dinner together and open gifts.  Along with giving all the grandkids their regular Christmas gifts, my in-laws like to have a prize game for the grandkids.  They buy a whole bunch of random gifts, wrap them, and then give each kid two raffle tickets.  They put the matching raffle tickets in a bowl and whatever number they draw then the kid gets to pick a gift.  It is always funny to see what they buy every year and the kids can trade with each other too!

Since Dustin was working the holidays - we thought we would try something different and have the 12 days of Christmas.  The kids got to open one of their gifts each day up to Christmas then they had just a few small gifts along with their stocking on Christmas morning.  I save all year long so we have our "Christmas budget" to spend when holiday comes around.  Dustin and I put a limit on each other this year so we tried to see what we could get each other without going over our amount.  I think we did a great job!  The 12 days of Christmas was OK - we tried something new but nothing compares to the excitement of Christmas morning!

Carlin's treasures!

Caden's loot!

Someone is loved!

I am spoiled - I even got my favorite Chocolate covered Cinnamon bears!

Christmas Brunch at my parents house has been a tradition for years.  We all go over in the morning and open gifts.  With 10 grandkids there is a lot of commotion and wrapping paper everywhere! LOL!  With the exception of my kids all the younger grandchildren received pillow pets.  It was so funny to watch them open them and see which animal they received.

Then we always have more family arrive to eat brunch with us - grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins - it varies every year depending on what plans are made.  My G-pa Freeze and my aunt Sherene and her kids were able to make it this year.  We don't see them very often so it was great to be able to spend time with them.