Christmas Came

We did the craziness of Christmas again this year… Drive home, spend the only “Non-holiday” night with friends at “Kringle Fest”, drive to Hilton Head for the Minnicks Christmas Eve Party, race to my parents house that night to be ready for Christmas Morning and be back at Alex’s mom’s house Christmas Night until the next morning!

Whew!

It’s exhausting but we have always agreed that having too many places to go and being tugged in many, many directions is a good complaint to have, especially at the holidays :)

Other than that we spent a lot of time in the kitchen, Tara made the yummiest homemade banana nut bread (that I am still living off of for breakfast each morning), doing last minute shopping, wrapping presents and having a family dinner at El Sombrero before Billy and Angela headed to North Carolina!

Here’s what it all looked liked:

We met baby willow…

Alex’s played with his graduation present to himself- a helicopter!

Tara brought Phoebe to play!

(her was not allowed to get down to play though because her is too white and pretty)

Billy and his flying duck turned out to be a hit!

  Rachel experienced her first “Eve” party with us! Lous and I’s shared our second/Eleventh Christmas this year!All the boys made it this year! 

Christmas morning finally arrived!

Tucker is a pro at opening presents on his own, and it makes it that much more exciting for him I believe!

Presents time!   

Adam’s banana pudding we made him!

Ohh Tara…..

Tara made Oreo Milkshakes!  - mmmmm-

*Merry Christmas 2010*

(Check out Mills face….)

They are always so pathetic when leaving!  Surprise, surprise! We came home to snow! 

We Certainly enjoyed Christmas this year but we sure did miss Billy (and Angela)! I guess when you think about it our family has been spoiled in the past because we have always managed to be together for Christmas…. but that’s how we like it :) ha But we enjoyed the time we got to spend with him and Angela just before Christmas!!

We planned to go on our first Skiing trip in Gatlinburg for New Years and are supposed to leave tomorrow morning and stay through the weekend BUT I have a sick little Lou who has not left the couch in over 24 hours….

Poor baby, I have been keeping him drugged up with the typical- Dayquil/Nyquil, chicken noodle soup, orange juice and oranges!

So we will see how he feels in the morning but I’m preparing myself for our New Year to start with a kiss on the cheek and a soup date on the couch!!

Either way hope you have a happy start to 2011!!

Happiest Season of All…..

Busy, busy, bees we have been but all with good, fun Christmas events…. which for the first time ever- makes me want Christmas not to come!! I want to prolog it longer because the anticipation, decorations, shopping and time off is soooooooooo fun!!

Well that and the fact that I’m not exactly done buying presents yet!

So I have to update you all with the parties, dinners and Christmas festivities we have been getting into the last few weeks before Christmas gets here and its all old news!

Last weekend we celebrated my brother in law, Sean’s 40th Birthday early (his real birthday is on Christmas!) and the whole family came up for it! 

His party actually fell on Alex’s mom real birthday!!

  Watching Seans slide show with his ADORABLE 80’s pics! Trooper…..

Our “traditional” food fight, started by Sean for the record*

No worries we left as friends and a “to be continued truce”….

It was quite a long night… click below for more!

 

View Full Album

We also had our “First Minnicks Christmas Spirit Dinner” as Amara called it, where we all got together at Andy and Rachel’s for some spaghetti, quality time and elephant game entertainment!

Lou won an “interesting book”…. I don’t think he knew it was the book “he brought” for the game though….

Originally the rule was to bring a “funny” gift, we all pretty much strayed from funny –in agreement that funny was subjective anyway, however looking back at the pictures it seems we found a lot to be funny :)

  Julian was such a good girl waiting for her turn to open presents!! 

We were so excited that Julian and Amber were here for the whole weekend after Alex’s graduation! She makes me miss my Ana so much!! Just going to Target or cooking with kids this age is so fun because everything is a game!

(I’m sure one day when we have our own 3 year old running around I will die looking back at this thinking going to Target is fun with a 3 year old? But it was!)

Anyway, Sunday we all went Ice skating with Julian… she was soooo excited to skate on the ice like a princess!!

She was ready to go!!

      She loves her Uncles!

I swear we were not torturing her in this picture, she told us her hands were starting to hurt but still wanted to skate so we had to hold her up in other more creative ways :)

Uncle Andy and Uncle Alex were so fun to skate with and Julian keot wanting to go faster!!! Auntie Autumn was fun too but she needed just as much help as Julian to stay up!

  She was so good and was really trying to move her feet to skate by herself!!

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!