Celebrating Christmas with Keith's family took place December 30 through to January 1st this year. Since his parents live 5 hours away from us, we spend a couple of nights with them and really make the festivities worth while! We are always very grateful for a mild/green/rainy/calm Christmas vs. a snowy/white/stormy Christmas because of the highway travel we have to do. This year, the roads were empty and clean. No worries about bad weather. A nice relief.
About one hour from our destination, we hit a bit of a traffic snarl. There was a fatal car crash on the highway which resulted in the west bound lane being completely closed. The only choice available to us was to do a big detour which added an extra hour to our driving time. Unfortunately, this meant we arrived to Keith's mom's Christmas dinner late. Better late than never though. I think everyone was starting to work on dessert when we pulled into the driveway so we didn't arrive too unfashionably late.
Keith's mom has such a knack for arranging beautiful displays throughout her home. Inside and out. This is the scene that greeted us by the front door when we arrived....
So cute, right?!
Christmas celebrations this year were decidedly quieter and more low-key than normal. And that wasn't intentional at all. You see...a good number of people were feeling under the weather. Some had colds. Some were in the process of coming down with full blown cases of the seasonal flu. Some (like Keith) were on the mend and trying to get over it. And then some of us were just trying to not get sick from everyone else. It was quite the scene. I'm sure in years to come we'll look back and groan and laugh and do the whole "Remember the Christmas when..."
It's a memorable one for sure.
A few little traditions with Keith's family when it comes to Christmas celebrations....We all gather together in the family room and sing carols. I've noticed that each year we all sit together with our little families and in the same spot year after year. You'd almost think we all hold the property rights to a specific couch or corner of that room!
Present opening time is the high-light for the kids of course. Max was very excited to open his own "Pond Hockey-opoly" game from grandpa and grandma...
I just love how the little boys (and it is only little boys - no girls in this clan!) are all gathered around together opening gifts, busy inspecting and playing with each others things. Boys are fun!
One of Max's gifts he received was this...thing. ha! I really have no idea what it's called. But you pull the two strings to make the disk in the middle spin and if you do it correctly then the disk will hum and whirrrrrrrrr and flash and dance. It's pretty cool. But there is a definite trick in getting it to work. Uncle Jonny has taken it upon himself to do the instructing below...
And then he gave Max his own little demonstration...
But it was still not working for the Maxter, so Grandpa gave him some one-on-one instruction...
And whadya know? Success!! Max loves that thing. I often hear it whirrrrrring and buzzing around our house... He's got it all figured out. (Meanwhile...I still can't get it to work for me. LOL!)
The evening always finishes off with a big snack fest. Keith's mom sets a beautiful delicious table full of all kinds of goodies (except for the sardines and weird fish food... that I don't call delicious.) for us to munch on...
We all get a candy bowl filled with lots of yummy goodies...another little tradition! :-)
Typically it's pretty late by the time we get to bed. But this year...it wasn't. Because of the flu bugs...we weren't as hungry and just wanted to get to bed and get our rest. I think we were finished by 10:00pm this year. Almost unheard of!
The next morning, we headed over to Shawn & Charlotte's for brunch. More delicious food!
I'm not sure where Max was when this next photo was taken. These boys are so cute. Don't you just love how cooperative they are for getting their photo taken? Alex loves that stuffed Orca. I'm pretty sure that everytime we are at Shawn & Charlotte's, that orca becomes the most sought after toy. Funny how that is.
Oh, this is where Max was. Playing games with the adults...
Every year, we take a pic of these boys all lined up on the couch according to their ages. Cute Cute Cute!
And it didn't turn out too bad considering I think Alex and Tanner and Evan were all feeling very under the weather. You can't really tell in the photo that anyone is sick.
Grandpa & Grandma live at the top of a hill, right next to the town park. In the winter, this is an added bonus because of the close proximity to go tobogganing. Max had been looking forward to doing this since the previous Christmas. Unfortunately this year, Mother Nature didn't want to cooperate and the snow conditions were less than stellar. Do you see what I see? Almost more grass than snow. Check out Max's expression. He was a little bit put out that the conditions weren't better. It was more of a disappointment for him than I realized it would be...
But we walked a bit further and found more snow on the steeper side of the hill. This helped ease the disappointment. The snow was very wet and soft so the toboggans and sleds didn't move very fast. We just made the most of it though.
I didn't go tobogganning. But I did step out and join the crew to take a few pictures.
What's that? You like my boots? Thanks! They are rubber and have an actual camoflague print all over them. And they're insulated. The (extreme) height of fashion...if you are an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Wasn't my hubby sweet to let me borrow them for a few minutes to take some pictures?!
These two were ready to call it a day. Better luck next year hopefully!
Later in the afternoon, we all celebrated an important birthday...Happy Birthday Kyle!
By this point we were headed into New Years Eve. I'll post the rest of the photos in my next update. I'll close this one off with a photo of the "Pond Hockey-opoly" game that took place. Max learned the ropes of playing real grown-up Monopoly from grandpa and the uncles.
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