Four Christmases

Yes, Four Christmases is a very funny Christmas movie with Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn (have you seen it?  it is worth a watch!).  It is also how many Christmas celebrations we had this year!

It started with our trip to Chicago.  My last day for the year was December 19.  We left for Naperville on the morning of December 20.  We stayed with Jeff and Erica there.  They took us out for a nice dinner in downtown Naperville (so cute!) and we had fun checking out the square's display of little train engines (maybe set up for Christmas?)  On Sunday we all went to Heather and Todd's house for the Okrzesik Christmas celebration (Christmas #1).  Keith's aunt and uncle were there and we had a gauc-off and a Mexican fiesta!  In case you don't know, a guac-off is a guacamole making competition.  I am proud to say that our recipe came in first place!  It was close but definitely a win. We finished it off with a catered taco bar.  Yum!  We opened a few gifts (but not all) to keep the afternoon more sane and just dedicated to hanging out and playing.  We left around 6:30 PM with some pretty tired kiddos.  Us adults stayed up long after they were in bed enjoying some snacks, cookies, and of course Jeff's home-brewed beer.

Aunt Heather and Aunt Terry

Grandpa and Grandma O

Thanks for the gift cards Uncle Larry and Aunt Anne Marie!

Pretty Little Olivia

Colin, what did you get?

Grandpa reads some new books to the girls

Arts and crafts time!

Christmas #2 was our own!  We left Naperville on Monday morning and the trip pretty much took us all day.  Tuesday we did a big grocery shopping run and then Wednesday was Christmas Eve.  We baked sugar cookies.  It's something I really like to do but man getting three anxious helpers involved really adds to the chaos!  The ordeal took 3 hours from start to clean-up.  And clean-up there was a lot of!  Still we were proud of our efforts and had (some) fun in the process.  They tasted good too!

Christmas Eve night we watched Four Christmases while being elves.  Most everything was wrapped already.  We just needed to add gift tags, wrap a few last presents, and set everything up.  It is so much fun to play Santa and his elves!  Magical!

Colin came in our bedroom around 6 AM but was still pretty tired it seemed and didn't insist on going downstairs right away on Christmas morning.  We laid in bed (and I drifted back to sleep and I think he did too) until 7.  That seemed a reasonable time so we went and woke up the girls who were happy to get up once they figured out what was going on.  Colin's first concern of course was to see if Santa had in fact come, straining his neck to see around the corner as we all came down the stairs.  Keith had sneaked down to turn on the tree lights and Julia's train going around the tree to make it seem like Santa had done those things.  Such fun!  We managed to string out gift opening until 8:30 by doing it one at a time.

Immediately they had to try out their new Mobi-Go games

Christmas morning smiles

I get some help opening my gifts from a princess and her sister

Caroline takes her new shopping cart for a spin

Boys playing with boy toys

Colin with his new Skylanders gear, heading to the basement to play Wii

After gifts, we had a nice brunch and hung out in the basement playing with all the new toys.  We let Colin play way more Wii than usual considering Santa brought him some new Skylanders and a new Skylanders game.  For dinner we made a Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey) and it tasted so good!  I didn't get enough at Thanksgiving I guess so we made homemade mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, rolls and pumpkin pie.  So good.

Christmas #3 was Mason Christmas on the Saturday after Christmas which we hosted this year.  I got it catered by a Greek restaurant so I didn't have to cook the main meal which was nice.  We hung out for most of the day, played games, watched Elf, opened presents and ate a lot.  Basically what families do at Christmas!

Opening gifts.  Colin gets Star Wars Trouble.

Julia helps Aunt Jenny open her gift.

Meme and Pop Pop

Cousins watching Elf (the girls like to "mix and match" their socks)

Meme and Pop Pop took Colin home with them on Sunday and dropped him off with Grandma and Grandpa O.  He spent two nights with them (and went bowling for the first time) and then spent one night with Meme and Pop Pop.  He did great and had a lot of fun.  He has never batted an eyelash about leaving us for 2 or 3 nights.  We do miss him though...the girls inquired about him and talked about him a lot.  On New Year's Eve, Grandma and Grandpa brought him back up and we celebrated our 4th Christmas with them (since we didn't open all gifts in Chicago) and celebrated New Year's too of course.

Caroline opens a gift while Colin waits his turn

Grandpa's snazzy new bottle opener with magnet cap catcher design that Keith made him

Family game of Star Wars Trouble

Candy makers - breaking in the new candy making set and Star Wars chocolate molds Colin got for Christmas

I was off for 16 whole days and it actually seemed like a nice long break.  We had a lot of activity but we also had a lot of down time to just hang out, relax and be a family.  It was a time for making memories and we made a lot of them.  I feel ready for 2015!  Happy New Year!