Christmas Day (night)

We always spend Christmas night with Gran and Grandad... we head over after kids naps and have dinner and do presents...

This year, we had steaks! Man, what a yummy Christmas dinner! I think we were all about Turkey'd out so it was  nice to have a break from that and have some other yummy foods!

So since Mack had been running a fever for 2 days (totally viral but still... contagious), we just didnt know what to do. We considered having me stay home with him but Ronni wanted to do it when we could all be there (sweet of her!). We considered rescheduling to Sunday but knowing my family, I figured Lainey or Rhyan would have it by then (which, btw, Lainey did!). So we decided to keep Mack separate as much as possible, get there later and leave as soon as presents were done.

Fast forward, Riley and Avery didnt get the virus (which btw was symptomless except for a fever... he already had a bad cough/runny nose but all the other kids already had that too, including Riley). Whew.

But he did well playing games on my phone. Guess there are real perks to not ever letting your kids have your phone unless you REALLY need to, huh ;-). It totally kept him entertained. AND, he "hid" under a table to play it! ha! Talk about isolation!

The kids love to help bring in the presents and pass them out!!!

Some sweet pics of all of us opening gifts. And a quick run down of what they all got!:
Rhyan- a disney shirt (for our trip in april! woohoo!) from Jason and Liz. And Frozen bedding from Gran and Grandad
Mack- a disney shirt from Jason and Liz and tinker toys and BOB books from gran and grandad
Lainey- a disney shirt from Jason and Liz and a grocery cart and food for it from gran and grandad

I also want to mention that Liz suggested that we open gifts one at a time so everyone could see what each person got etc. GREAT idea! Made it last a little longer, was way less chaotic and I got pics of each kid! Brilliant!

This year, I had a photographer take family pictures for all of us back in October as a thank you to Gran and Grandad for all they do for us (hello, we lived with them for 7 weeks last year which is just a taste of how they help!). Well I thought some framed photos would be a great gift :-)

Our family also gave Gran a gift card to Brighton which she also loved!

I had the idea, too, to get Andy a YETI tumbler for his coffee. Um... they were ridiculously hard to find! Apparently it was THE hit item for Christmas this year! But thanks to Jeff, we scored one!

We also gave Grandad a gift card to Bass pro shop!

After gifts, we tried to get a few pics in front of the tree! Of course Rhyan was a stellar model (btw, it was like 73 degrees here on Christmas day so Rhyan thought that meant sundresses were appropriate!)

Mack refused to participate in such shennanigans as picture taking, though. Shocker ;-)

Can you tell that Jason loves picture taking??? HA!

We had a great time! After gifts we had planned to leave, but Rhyan remembered that last year the kids had decorated gingerbread houses on Christmas day. Well, Ronni had bought them for the kids to do so of course they insisted we stay for that, as well. I was just worried of Mack spreading sickness. But he was pretty confined with his own house so i guess it worked out...

 And finally, a sweet pic of these two cousins playing together! With them being only 4 months apart in age, I expect they will have lots of fun at family gatherings for a while to come!

What a great evening! OH, and my sweet in laws spoiled us with tons of giftcards for us and the kids, too! Looking forward to using those in 2016 for some DATE NIGHTS! :-)