my family's Christmas 2018

The day after our own small family Christmas and Terry's family Christmas at the ranch, we finally celebrated with my side of the family on the 26th. We hadn't all been together to celebrate Christmas in...ever, I think. I was looking for past blogs and couldn't find any. I saw on Facebook that Steph and Steve celebrated here in 2010 with Nathan and Ana but that was the year we stayed in G-brug since I was 8 months pregnant with Samuel. And since then, I don't know that they've been back (not that I could find anyway).

I tried hard to take more pictures this time when Nathan and Ana were here and this is the result, some pretty random kitchen happenings. Ha ha.

All the kids chilling waiting for the fun to begin. 

I think we had pizza that night (?) and in the meantime we played a ton of Bananagrams. 

A typical Nathan expression along with Elin.

We played perhaps two hours worth of Bananagrams. I was so done after an hour or so. I kept getting worse and worse so I had to excuse myself. Stephanie, on the other hand, kept getting better and better. I think she was siphoning my brain power.

I had Ana take those game pictures. Then she came out to the living room and took some pictures of Quinn.

Adorable little Quinn!

And a duck face of her own. 😂

I think we did presents before we ate. This shot isn't in focus but I like Steve with Trouncer's tail in his mouth. 

We took a round of funny ones too. 

😂😍😆

My brother's crew.

I accidentally took these while the camera was still on automatic shooting, so they were all silly for me. 

Like I said the day before, Evie made art for everyone. 

I got a new coat! 

A new FM transmitter for his rusty, trusty Malibu so he can listen to podcasts and audiobooks via his phone.

Evie's art for Gramma.

Dad with the shirts I got him.

Ana with their new pillows.

Giftcards were about the only thing that could work for Steph and Steve since they had to fly.

A bow for Nathan. 

I thought this iPad holder for my dad was funny.

My parent's clock.

Our photo book.

The kids got the mother of all marble machines. 

Thought this smooch was cute.

Elin's new unicorn thing. 

Right before bed Evie made these magnatile elephants and was so proud. We tried not to wreck them but couldn't help it in the end.

ranch Christmas 2018

After we finished up our own family Christmas, we headed to Terry's parents house for the remainder of the day. First up was lunch...

...followed closely by presents! After the annual family picture of course.

Cute little Bekah curtseying for some reason. 

Samuel's turn to open more Legos. Ezra is already clutching his new Hot Wheels track.

More Shopkins blah.

Pillows and bedding for Shari and Jesse's new bed.

Incredibles 2 for our family.

Jerry taking a gander at the annual photo book I make. Funny story: One of the books they sent was creased throughout so I had them send me another. Except they just duplicated the original order and sent me three new books. Now I have two extras and don't know what to do with them. If anyone wants an entire photo book of our family, just let me know. Ha!

Terry's brilliant idea for his mom were these chicken printed galoshes. They were so perfect for her and her daily chicken doodies (doody, duty, get what I did there? 😂)!

Next we appropriately went out to check on the chickens and collect the eggs.

Chickens...and Chuck.

Checking for eggs. Samuel has two in his hand and Grace has another one.

Cute little egg holders.

There's Chuck! He's so funny. He's been staying inside the chicken coop most of January.

We found six eggs but one was dropped on the way upstairs. It made me feel better since the last time we had gone out there I had dropped one too. 

Back inside everyone started going through their gifts. Shari read Jerry the tractor book she got him. Cute.

Terry put together a track for Ezra.

Evie and Grace drew a snowman on my neck with Evie's new watercolor pencils. 

Terry got a gingerbread man that looked like a brown blob. 

There's the photo clocks we got for the grandparents and Shari's crew. I liked them! 

Later that evening Terry donned his Drew Carey reading glasses for his game of The Price Is Right. He had prepared the game for his youth leaders a couple weeks earlier and we kept it ready for Christmas. He also put on the belly fanny pack for laughs. 😂

Handing out bidding cards.

Alice won the first bid.

 What an attentive audience.

Shari's turn was up next.

Jesse's turn. I think just about everyone won a round but I didn't get a picture of everyone. 

Grampa and Gramma helped Ezra and Sarah to bid.

We left between 7-8:00pm after it finally started snowing as it had threatened to all day and I was hoping I'd get to see Stephanie and Steve when we got back home. They had arrived around lunchtime but of course we didn't see them then. I was thankful they were all at our house when we got home so we got to hang out for a while. They were plenty tired from getting up between 1-2:00am to drive to Portland for their flight! We didn't figure they'd be up for a lot of action that night so we had planned my family celebrations for the day after Christmas.  It worked out well. I was just so glad we were able to see them! It'd been since May 2016 that I last saw them and September 2015 for the rest of us.