Christmas Afternoon

We took our time Christmas morning but pretty soon it was time to head to Mentor for Christmas #3! We ate pasta, opened presents, played Cornhole and Poetry for Neanderthals! Another new game this year-we brought a big saran wrap ball filled with small prizes and it got unwrapped while people tried to roll doubles with a pair of dice. You got to keep whatever prizes fell out on your turns! Such a fun day!

 

Christmas Morning!

We had some compromising to do to figure out what time to get up again this year. Paige was hoping for 7am and Owen was hoping for much later...I think we settled on 8:30! It was a nice and fun morning. I think everyone got things they were hoping for and also some surprise gifts! Owen got Cavs tickets and Paige was gifted a ski day, hopefully we get the right weather for it soon! 

The kids set up this plate for Santa with some surprise Ranch seasoning in the milk!

Waiting for Owen...

Everyone is up!

Stockings!

Owen and his stocking!

Extra present under the tree

The kids with the cutest gift containers

Kim and Pat

Paige and Pat

Owen and Kim

 

Christmas Eve!

I love traditions and this time of year is filled with them! We got together with Pat's family on Christmas Eve to exchange presents and have our traditional soup dinner (this was our third year making the same 3 soups!). Lauren, David and Eva joined us this year too which made it extra special! Eva painted nails and we all played some Quiplash together before wrapping it all up to get some sleep before Santa came!

 

Birthday and Cookies!

We celebrated my mom's birthday with another birthday/christmas dessert celebration! The cookie we chose this year was a white chocolate covered oreo decorated to look like a snow globe. It was a little finicky to make but ultimately very cute! If I made them again, I would use baking chocolate because these were a bit too sweet! We got some Jimmy John's for lunch and celebrated with chocolate cake!

 

Candyland and a Visit!

Laney and Zsaz came to visit after Thanksgiving and we spent a couple days hanging out! The first day we all went to see Candyland and walk around PG and then went back to the grandparents house for pizza and games. We met up the next day too for lunch with Alex and Nikki but I didn't get any pictures! 

 

Thanksgiving!

I used to stress about hosting Thanksgiving and I realized that now that we have so much more room I am so much more relaxed! We've also been doing it so long now that we kind of know how things are going to go, even though there is always some sort of snag or surprise...this year the turkey was done two hours early! Thank goodness Pat noticed the timer in the turkey had popped up because it would have burnt if we had waited for the clock timer to go off! We ended up covering it with foil and putting it back in the oven on the warming setting and it was perfect by the time we ate. We tried a new recipe this year for brining the turkey and I think we'll continue to do it! We ate, watched some football and played some games and we were all tired and full by the time everyone went home!

Prepping the mashed potatoes

Griffin was hiding in this cardboard scratcher for awhile

Pat decided the walls needed to be touched up

Done!

Waiting for family

Tablescape

Place setting

Yum!

The guests!

I don't know how this happened but I had to take a picture!

Me and the kids

Naptime!

What we are thankful for! I love that friends and family participate too, it's so fun, funny and touching to see what people choose to write