Christmas 2008 - part 1

We spent Christmas this year at the Zebrowski's. We decided that we are done with doing both families over the holiday season. While we have the time to visit both, we no longer have the stamina or the patience with our children. Ryan is a great traveller, always has been, but Emma is not and she longs for her bed at home.

We travelled to my parents on the 20th. This was going to be an unusally long visit due to two reasons. First was my sister, Robin, had bought tickets for the Lions game on the 21st for Kris, my dad, myself and Robin to go. It was birthday presents for all of us. While the game wasn't a big thrill, because it was a pretty boring losing (0-15 at the time) game and season - it was nice to go to our first NFL game. We had fun seeing Ford Field and even walking in the freezing Michigan air. The second reason was our 'psuedo' cousin, Aaron is leaving for the Marines and his parents (my parent's best friends) were throwing a going away party on th 27th (more on that in a later post).

So we had a lot of time to relax and spend with my family. We shopped and ran errands and all the rest before settling down for the Christmas activities. First on the agenda is celebrating with the Zebrowski's at Aunt Dawn's house. This is the most rambuncious time because of the 15 kids under the age of 11. There's screaming and tearing and most of all searching for your own presents before it's time to open. Reminds me of when I was young. Santa even visits and while Ryan was the only kid who wouldn't sit on his lap at least he didnt cry. All the kids had a great time. Emma spent her time eating wrapping paper while everyone else opened her presents, eventually taking a little nap on Daddy. Ryan spent his time playing with the boys guitar hero guitar, opening gifts and eating all the treats that Uncle Phil would give him (which was a lot - see picture). The kids got so many great toys and presents.

After that, we took the kids home and put them down for naps, while we went to church. Then we headed to Grandma's house to celebrate with the Knolls. As always, the games there were good and we all came home with some goodies.

Christmas morning, was spent eating donuts and opening so many gifts our heads were spinning. There were too many to wait for everyone to have a turn so we just opened as we could! Unfortunately, some of the pictures from the early morning came out poorly because of the camera being on a bad setting. But you can see all the pictures from our time away at our Snapfish link. We spent the day playing with our toys and helping with a great dinner that we shared with the Stones. Overall, it was such a wonderful Christmas and we were so happy to be able to spend it with some of our family.