We celebrate our family Christmas on Christmas Eve. Ben plays drums at the Christmas Eve services most years, so that takes the whole day Christmas Eve. Then that night we drive to New Martinsville. We originally started this so we could have a day as a family where we could play with new toys and games and not have to rush out the door for several days. It's a fun tradition we appreciate and love.
So we opened gifts. Played games.
Decorated the cookies Ben and Sophie made the day before. Took naps.
Popped popcorn in my new Whirly Pop and watched Home Alone 2.It was a good day.
We woke up to a white Christmas in New Martinsville. That was really fun.
A girl and her sewing machine.
A boy and his pogo stick.
Ted was SO EXCITED to pass along all his Pokemon cards to Henry for Christmas.
Sophie was loving all the little kid toys.
It took Ben 20 minutes and a few YouTube videos to figure out Henry's new transformer.
And this sink of Roxie's is really, really cool.
This kid cracks me up.
And he didn't think his mom could pogo. I showed him. You would think he would learn after the hover board and trampoline flips. But whatever.
And then I put my phone away, which is also my camera. We had lunch with all of Ben's family and my family. It's another tradition I love.
In the afternoon we headed out to my parents. A couple of years ago, my brother started doing Christmas dinner. He brings his cooking contraptions to my parents and cooks on the back deck. Shrimp and pork tenderloin. This year we added bear to the menu.
All my siblings and their kids come, plus a few cousins and my aunt. We talked and laughed and played games and watched football. Uncle Jim came down from PA and joined the party. It was a good, good day.
The kids had a wrapping paper party!
We stayed in New Martinsville for a few days. We watched WVU get hammered in the bowl game, spent an evening at Aunt Did's, played games with Andy & Courtney and felt the weather turn COLD.
The week between Christmas and New Year's is my favorite of the year. We lay low and no one even cares. We watch lots of sports, complete my semi-annual purge, stay up late and sleep in.
We spent two days cleaning out the basement and then moved on to Sophie's room. She got a new sewing machine and table so we needed to create some space.
Before (we were cleaning out closets, too):
After:
Ben was sick for several days which was a bummer. We did manage to go out for wings with friends, rang in the New Year with the Sizicks and played euchre with the Kozels.
I was a little sad about sickness over the break, so the night before we were supposed to go back to school, we drove to Pittsburgh to watch the new Star Wars at an iMax theater. Whoa - that was awesome! A few years ago, we binge watched Star Wars 4, 5, 6, 1, 2 & 3 over Christmas break and a few added snow days. Then we have watched all the new ones in the theater together. It was a fun night of new movie watching experience, playing heads up (and laughing hard!) in the van and talking about our family goals for 2018 over dinner.
And then we had an Arctic Academy Day the next day and didn't go back to school....
