2010/01/05

Christmas 2009 – A short recap.

The month of December is always such a whirlwind! I love the holidays but I’m glad when things wind down again. Here is a quick recap of our holiday celebration.

Dec 21
We met with my side of the family for an early celebration and the much anticipated Secret Santa reveal. This is our second year doing this and the kids (as well as the adults) love it. We draw names about three weeks before Christmas and send each other little notes or trinkets. The kids have a great time trying to guess who their Secret Santa is.



Dec 22
We drove to Lincoln, NE to spend the holiday with Joel’s side of the family. This is what the back of our car looked like!



Dec 23
Spent the day hanging around the house. We got hit with a huge snow storm that dumped 8-10 inches of snow. Natalie helped grandma do some baking.



Dec 24
Joel's family does not normally do much on this day.  We had dinner and just hung around playing games.  At bedtime the girls each opened a gift with their Christmas Pajamas.  We stood around the tree admiring the mountain of gifts and trying to guess how many there were.  Joel's mom always has a prize for the person that guesses the number closest to the actual one.  This year I won with a guess of 181.  I believe the actual number was a little higher.






Dec 25
Christmas Day!  The girls were so excited!  Normally we wait for Joel's brother to arrive before we start the gift opening.  However, he is usually two or more hours late, so this year we let the girls open their gifts from us first thing in the morning.  They were both so surprised at what they got.  Kaitlin got a laptop and Natalie the American Girl she wanted.  Both items were at the top of their Christmas List, but neither thought they were really going to get them.  




Once everyone arrived, the festivities continued. We all got some very nice and generous gifts and had a good time sharing with each other.

Joel's brother always put a lot of effort into his gifts and a lot of them are "interesting", if not very practical.  Every year he chooses to highlight a gift, which he normally wraps with extravagant decorations and even Christmas lights. To give you an idea of the nature of this gift, one year I was the recipient and inside I found a huge feather duster with the handle made out of bull pizzle.

Since Kaitlin has been in the picture, she has been the most common recipient of THE GIFT. When she was younger, I used to worry because a lot of the time the gift was not very child appropriate or turned out to be a joke that would leave her in tears. Through the years, she has gotten smart about it and now looks forward to seeing what crazy thing her uncle comes up with.

This year Natalie decided that it was not fair that Kaitlin is always the one getting THE GIFT. Joel must have talked to his brother, because this time THE GIFT was for Natalie. She was so excited to open it! Inside she found about 53 pounds of assorted candies!



For her part, Kaitlin won the “Most Ironic Gift”: Ten pounds of Jelly Belly Beans inside a big box of Crest Toothpaste. Got to love that McArthur humor.



All in all our Christmas was a fun one and a reminder of how truly blessed we are to be surrounded by wonderful family and friends. I hope it was also a wonderful holiday for you and yours.

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