A White Christmas!

We had a beautiful, white Christmas in Oregon. As we crossed over the bridge to my aunt and uncle's house on Christmas morning this was the spectacular view. It was awesome!

We arrived just a few minutes later than we had anticipated so little Jasmine was quite excited to go downstairs and see what Santa had left for her. Emmy was still a bit too young to fully grasp the whole concept of Santa Clause coming to her house. My aunt, "Auntie Nana" brought both girls down stairs, stopping along the way to admire the stockings. Dahlia was already downstairs (she was too young this year to understand at all what was going on around her).

The girls took a few minutes to play with their new babies (each of them had one) and then Jasmine and Emmy played with Emmy's new stove and cookware.

As a family (all 15 0f us) we began opening stockings. It took a while as you can imagine. Last year Emmy didn't even open her stocking on Christmas morning so she opened a present a day throughout the month of January. This year was another story. She fully understood the concept of surprises and opened every single one of her stocking gifts. Dahlia on the other hand had not problem letting Mom and Dad open her stocking gifts while she played throughout the house (check back from time to time).

Once everyone had finished with stockings we started in on "present mountain". We got about half way through (at 1:00 in the afternoon) and it was time for breakfast. So off we went to the dining room to enj oy "Auntie Nana's" egg dish, Uncle Erik's (delicious) Egg Nog cinnamon rolls, fres h cherries and blueberries. It was all soooo yummy! Following breakfast we headed back to the living room to resume the opening of gifts which lasted until 3:00 or so. At that time some went off to nearby bedrooms to catch a little nap, others sat around visiting, and the girls played with their new toys and eventually drifted off to sleep for an early evening nap. Christmas dinner preparations began about 6:30 or 7:00 and we sat down to eat at 9:00pm. It was a wonderfully, relaxing day full of family time and all the child-like joys of Christmas.