Christmas 2008

What a busy past few days we have had in Altus. Great Grandma Erma and Grandma Linda arrived on Monday from Ohio. Then Grandma Jenna and Grandpa Ross arrived on Christmas Eve. What a wonderful house filled with laughter, game playing, puzzle putting together, Madeline holding, and sneezing we have had! Yes, Nick and Madeline had a cold when everyone arrived and then decided to give it to the rest of us as a Christmas Present. The only person who hasn't gotten it yet...is Grandma Jenna. Good thing I had lots of medicine in the cabinet and boxes and boxes of Kleenex.

Here are all the Grandparents and Madeline before we left for the Christmas Eve service. It was a super cute children's service with a great nativity and singing!

After the service we headed home to eat some chili and wait for it to get dark.

Then we went to the Altus park to ride the train and see the Christmas lights. Nick even took us all around town to look at all the lights. After the lights we headed home to watch Elf!

Next came Christmas morning breakfast. We had a yummy breakfast casserole and cinnamon rolls. Then we had to get our lunch started. Nick cooked our ham the Good Eats way. It was WONDERFUL!! Thank you Alton Brown. Then by the time we had breakfast cleaned up and lunch started our sick princess needed a nap.

We all sat around and chatted and waited for her to wake up so we could open our presents. Then came all the present opening. Nick was so gracious and let us do it my way and have everyone open one present at a time. :)

It was so much fun and we received so many wonderful gifts and Madeline's toy box is filled to overflowing! Nick surprised me with a final gift that turned out to be my dream serger. Hopefully when this cold goes away I can get to serging! Madline loved all the noise the paper made and opening and closing the boxes. She really liked the bows and loved to untie them! After we cleaned up the fun mess we had a yummy lunch and then we played with Madeline's new toys.

So far her favorite is Nick's old wagon that Linda brought. She loves to ride around in the wagon. She holds on and laughs the entire way around the house.

Don't even think about taking her out of the wagon without seeing a few tears. Nick got an electric smoker for Christmas from Linda so he smoked a bunch of ribs and a huge brisket. They were super yummy!

One of my favorite parts was that EVERYONE helped take down all the Christmas decorations and Nick and my Dad put them all in the attic. Then we rearranged the furniture in my living and dining room to get ready for my new dining room table. (a future blog) We were lazy most of the time and enjoyed just being together and watching our little Madeline start to scoot and look like she is getting even closer to crawling! Hopefully our colds won't last too long and we will be ready to go play with all our new things! It was a great holiday and wonderful to have both sides of our family together. Hopefully they all had a great time and will come back again!