Christmas celebrations!!!

Our many Christmas celebrations are finally behind us, much to the children's chagrin. They were definitely a lot of fun, but I'd have to say also very tiring. :-)

We started off with our annual "photo shoot" to make our Christmas card for the kids. The older the kids get, they do get a bit easier -- but it's still an exercise in patience. Here is the shot we went with and the final card:



Our first excurison was down to visit Great-Grandma Imogene and have a small Christmas celebration with her on Christmas Eve. They got some really nice clothes from Great-Grandma for Christmas. (They've already worn them by now!)



And they started playing with some old toy bricks at her house while we were there. They are officially the third generation now to play with these! They were bought for my Mom and her siblings, my sister and I played with them when we were little, and now my kiddos are playing with them. How neat is that?



Then it was time to wake up Christmas morning and see what Santa brought! The kids were ecstatic as their ONE Santa gift they requested was a Nintendo DSi - and Santa, of course, came through!



Santa really is the best. He even included several DS games, and the DSi's have hardly left the kids' sides from Christmas Day. Mom and Dad got them some presents too, of course, but nothing worthy of competing with the DSi's. :-)

Then, later that same day, the Benich family was coming to our house to celebrate Christmas. So we had quite a full house with about 16 people eating Christmas dinner at our house. Whew! Thankfully, everyone helped contribute to the meal. We probably all ate too much, but it was quite yummy.

And it was time for the kiddos to get to open presents AGAIN. Yes, you can be that all of them were very psyched. :-)



Then on Saturday, our next Christmas celebration was with the Ossanna side of the family (Ken's Mom's side of the family). Where there was another gift exchange for the little ones...



And our last and final celebration was with my side of the family at my sister's house.



Where we had our fourth and final Christmas celebration and gift exchange. The kids were so sad to see it end, but they had so much fun!



And thanks Papa and Grandma for the automatic Nerf gun for Kyle (not!), and Auntie Danah for yet another Webkinz for Delaney. :-)

And here are a few of the hilarious gifts received that night:



I received a plaque that says, "I love to give homemade gifts... which one of the children would you like?"

My mom received yet another Scrabble game (to my dad's chagrin).



Kenny received a t-shirt that says, "Behind every great man is a woman who is rolling her eyes." (I wonder why everyone laughed so hard?)



My dad received this t-shirt, with my Mom declaring that he can't wear it when he's out with her. I'll let you read it yourself.

And concluding the gift exchange was PaPa opening the largest gift of the evening, that the kids had wanted him to open since the beginning. Apparently though, a really naughty elf was just teasing PaPa and had wrapped and wrapped his gift many times, in increasingly larger boxes. When he finally got to the gift, it was an itty-bitty fishing item!!!

Too funny! After a lot more food, playing games and staying up too late -- the celebrations were officially over. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas celebration (or celebrations) too, and we wish everyone a wonderful New Year!

Ken, Dani, Delaney & Kyle!!!