Christmas Day

Christmas morning!!! Seriously, can any other day really compete with Christmas morning when you're a kid!??? These kids almost look intoxicated, they're so happy! This year, however, the kids woke up in Grandma & Grandpa's house and they were relieved to know that Santa did in fact get the memo. They all made out like bandits, like always. A highlight for Austin this year is his new snowboard. He was pretty excited to get it and strap himself inside. He has already had his first "daddy taught lesson" up at Mt. Hood and did awesome. I think he'll be picking it up really quickly. Grandpa was kind to fix us a big, wonderful breakfast before we trekked back home for the remainder of the day.

Every Christmas we try to uphold the family tradition of shooting clay birds with our shot guns. This year was no exception. The Ridgeway's invited us out to their property for this event and we had such a great time. Both Kyle and Justine were able to take leave from the military and spend Christmas at home. It was great to see them! Later that evening we headed over to Jeff & Marie's for dinner. Marie has taken on the tradition of hosting Christmas dinner at their house, which makes us all happy because she is such a great cook!

Not all gifts were opened in the morning. Spencer and I had a present waiting for the kids at home. We got them a 26 gallon fish aquarium for their room. It's really a neat tank and we got lots of fun accessories, including a large, bubble-blowing dragon. Unfortunately, we lost about 7 fish in the beginning while the tank was trying to get established, but now we are going strong. Fish tanks are so soothing and eye catching, we all love it. The boys fall asleep to watching the fish eat every night.

Christmas Eve

Geez, I am having to resort to my pictures to spark all the memories from this past Christmas. To me it feels like the holiday season was 6 months ago. Time sure has a way of flying by rather quickly. Lets see ... Christmas Eve this year was a little different from normal. We still held the traditional bowling and lunch at Burgerville with friends, but then afterwards we packed everyone and everything up and headed north to my Mom's for the night. Many years ago Spencer and I established that we were not going to venture away from home during Christmas. This year we ate our words. I had a long aching desire to spend Christmas Eve with my parents up north and Spencer was kind enough to oblige. Christmas Eve dinner was held at my sister, Robin's house. She made Mandarin Chicken (a Reed family tradition). It was yummy. She had quite the turnout too. A lot of her husband's family, who I had never met, were there. So at first it was a little awkward, but kids have a way of breaking the ice and soon we all felt at home with each other. After dinner we all sat in a circle around her family room and did a gift exchange. The boys got new Jammie's, which they didn't waste anytime getting changed into. Once back at Grandma's house, they each got to open a gift from Grandma & Grandpa. I thought that the excitement of the night would be enough to keep them up all night, but it didn't. We all slept well.