~Burton Hillis

Chirstmas for us is a week long family extravaganza. We start the weekend before Christmas at my Dad’s, spend the rest of the week at my Mom’s, drive four hours to get home on Christmas Eve, have Christmas morning in our home, then have Christmas Day with Big T’s family. Not to mention lots of family activities in between. It’s a family gathering marathon.

I got exhausted just writing that!

It can get a little stressful, but we try to take it easy on ourselves when we don’t have time to bake or we have to do something last minute. It all works out in the end.

Here are a few pictures from our first Christmas event at my Dad’s house:

Priceless is seeing my older brother, getting excited over receiving the movie Conan.

My Dad and S-Mom are treating Big T and I to a date night for our Christmas gift, babysitting included! What more can parents ask for? Little T got a little play slide and a musical toy.

After we exchanged gifts, we took a basketball break. Little T wanted to make a basket, so Big T got out the ladder and helped him out a bit.

When basketball was done, we played Dance Revolution on the Wii.

Piggy spent the whole day in the kitchen. She has mastered the skill of looking like she hasn’t eaten in weeks, heh heh.

Speaking of eating, there were lots of tasty treats all around:

Later in the evening the babies went upstairs to play…except for B, she had important phone calls to make.

We had a great time catching up with everyone (and isn’t this the cutest smile ever?):

Meanwhile, the big kids played Oklahoma Monopoly downstairs. I tried to explain to Little T that he wasn’t old enough to play yet, but he just looked at me and said, “come on mom, Oklahoma Monopoly is for everyone”. I can’t argue with that.