Christmas 2012 Recap

I checked out for a while at the end of the year.  As everyone knows, things just got busy!  We had a wonderful Christmas though and I thought I'd share the highlights!

It kicked off with Karen performing in her first Christmas program. I laughed the entire time I watched her!

Then Carl playing in the annual Casey Lawson Memorial Alumni Game on the 22nd.  This is the eighth year alums from Tekoa and Oakesdale have gotten together to see if they "still got game"... Last year was the first year that the "young" guys beat the "old" guys... much to Carl's disgust.  So - this year was redemption year - hence Carl's sober face in the picture, he had his game face on!

The "old" guys pulled it out in resounding fashion and felt somewhat redeemed.  It started our Christmas celebration off on a positive note!

We had our tree up in early December, but had not decorated it yet.  The 23rd was spent getting the house cleaned up and then getting all of our decorations out and the girls had a great time helping decorate!

Entranced with the "dancing Santa", momentarily distracted from ornaments!

Megan's turn to put the angel on...

"It's too high Daddy! You do it!!"

Homemade stockings from Carl's Mom

The tree after Santa visited - notice the height the ornaments start, keeping them out of Lauren's reach!

Christmas morning was pretty low key, the girls didn't have enough memory from last year to drag us out of bed at some awful hour.  We actually ended up waking them up for church - we had 8am Christmas Mass.  We made it to Mass and came home and had breakfast before they discovered the surprises waiting for them under the tree.  I don't think we'll have the same "restraint" next year... :) 

We didn't manage to get any pictures taken of the present opening... but you all have kids and know what it's like! :)

After a short nap for Lauren and Megan, we headed over to Carl's folks to join two of his sisters and their families (there were eight adults and fourteen kids in total) for a couple of days of Christmas fun!  We all live in the same town so don't generally sleep over - but last year we tried all staying over and it was so much fun we ended up doing it an extra night!  This year we just planned on two nights - it is amazing to have that many people under one roof and not go absolutely crazy.  But we didn't ... it was just a ton of fun!  Some of the highlights include:

• Never-ending nerf gun war for the Dads and boys...
• Homemade ice cream!
• Lots, and lot, and lots of eating!
• Banana-grams... if you've never played it, you should try!  It adds a whole new meaning to the word "peal!"
• Pinochle - my partner and I had no less than FOUR double pinochles over the course of the two days... my father-in-law was just about beside himself!!  It was fun being on my side of it though!!
• Jib-Jab marathons - the little girls could not get enough of these silly videos... 

• Lots of fun playing with cousins!

• Down-time to snooze on the couch

• Finally... just good, old-fashioned family time!  I feel so blessed to be a part of Carl's family.  I didn't see any of my family until after New Years but the closeness with his family made it so much more bearable!

We normally spend New Years with my family, but it ended up being a bad year for that all the way around.  My Mom is recovering from surgery and had some complications (nothing serious) and so was unable to drive up like usual.  Then, my kids got sick right after we got home from Granny & Papa's... we spent from Friday the 28th through last Friday the 4th having croup go through all three girls... we quarantined ourselves!

My Dad had to come to Spokane for work - which he did on the 2nd.  So on Sunday, my Dad and two of my sisters and my sister's family came down.  We had our family Christmas, sort of, and celebrated Karen and Carl's birthday.  We missed my Mom and other sister though!  They will be coming up in a couple of weeks and I am sooooo looking forward to it!

Lauren loves her Grandpa!  She will choose him over anyone!

That, my friends, is the recap of our Crider family Christmas and New Years!  Here's wishing you all a blessed 2013!!

Stay tuned for a recap of 2012 and looking ahead to 2013...