Christmas

On Christmas Eve, Marian came over for our traditional Christmas celebration. She loads the tree with gifts and has activities with the girls ready. After lunch, we had a bit of time before working on dinner so Marian took us into Costco to do some shopping since I dropped our membership this past year.

We stuffed ourselves with rib roast, braised carrots and potatoes. We were tired and turned in a little earlier than usual this year. In the morning, we opened presents and had our annual Belgium Waffles for breakfast.

Of course, we had to clean up the melee that was now our living room! The kids played with some of their gifts while we chatted and got ready for the next part of the day. Soon Marian had to take off and we had to get ready for Christmas dinner with my family. 

After making our offerings for Christmas dinner, we packed up a few gifts and headed over to my brother's house.

All the cousins played games together. It's nice to see everyone getting along so well. Even my sister's older boys played with their younger cousins more now that they are not so very young any more.

We had another feast. Luckily, my brother decided on salmon as the main dish this year so we didn't have to have more meat after the feast we had the night before! My dad wanted to leave early for some reason so my mom took him home and came back for dessert and presents.

As usual, we visited longer than we planned. We didn't leave until nearly midnight I think and we needed to get up to head to Christian's family the next day!