Merry Christmas, One and All

I love Christmas with my family. We have so much fun together and we end up smiling and laughing through the entire day. This year we were lucky enough to have Adam and Linds (plus the kiddos, of course) and Nana Bets in town, so it was a packed house and that made for even more good times. Summer loved here teddy bear.Of course, Gunner is always a hoot to watch when he's opening presents. He's plenty old enough to understand what's going on and he's used to being the center of attention, so he hams it up a little bit, but his joy is genuine on most of his gifts. Also, I kinda love when he gets a gift that he doesn't know what to do with or isn't extremely excited about, because he has no poker face and his confusion/displeasure is readily apparent. Clearly, he's happy about the PS3.Dave is in the middle of making a career change from engineering to medicine, so his gifts this year were mostly geared in that direction. All kinds of goodies that I can't pronounce and he'll be putting to use soon as he tests the healing waters.Dad is a gamer. He loves bringing us together to play, and he's usually pretty dominant (especially in Trivial Pursuit and games along those lines). Now he's got another game that we can (and did) all play together and have fun as a family. Gotta love the Wii.Pete and Jordyn arrived a little late, as they'd started their day down at Jordyn's parents' house, but they wasted no time catching up. I think this is right after they opened their bookmarks from Gunner (which we all loved, due to their personalized embroidery and pictures). Aren't they a cute couple!Zoey and Grammy were also having a good time with opening presents, though I suspect that Grammy would have been completely satisfied to have the babies being born earlier this year as her Christmas present. Come to think of it, I think all of us would accept that and ask for nothing more. Welcome to the family, girls, and I hope you enjoyed your first Christmas!Zoey (pictured here) and Summer only have one Aunt, and they adore Megan. She holds them and cuddles with them and they're absolutely tickled pink with all of it. Here we see the gals laughing in the mirror and being fascinated with how utterly cute they are together.Linds has always had style, and I think we all envy that. I mean, who else in our family could pull off the Ali G sunglasses as she shows here. Note: if I mysteriously vanish in the next little bit, it's probably because Linds killed me for posting this pic. hahaha Totally kidding, just FYI.Maybe one of the more popular gifts received by anyone this Christmas was Gunner's pack of NERF guns. Everybody played with them, and there were battles raging all day. Who said that NERF guns were just for kids? Or maybe all of us are just Toys R Us kids and don't want to grow up...Here is the bookmark that Gunner gave me, and it's a great gift. Linds and Adam may have helped a little bit, but Gunner picked the items to be put on the bookmark and even did some of the stitching, if I'm not mistaken. The birthday cake on mine is because my birthday is in December. So great!Can't wait until next December for more holiday hijinks and spending the day opening presents and playing with my family. Who knows what wonderful gifts will be made and given to loved ones.

PS If you didn't notice, there are no pictures of Adam in this post. That's because he was behind a video camera all day, capturing the precious moments live. Such a good dad and it warms my heart to see him joining me in documenting our family history and especially getting his little ones on film so they'll be able to look back on it in the future.