Merry Christmas!

Lots of pictures in this post! We got home early today, around 10am. We had our big Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve so we could share it with our friend, Chris. Also, my mother in law had to work both nights, so we tried our best to make everything work around her having to sleep during the day and what-not.

We had a great time. Dinner was awesome, we played games well into the wee hours of the morning. I think I finally passed out around 4am, which made waking up at 7am with the kiddos that much more agonizing! Luckily, the kids had tons of gifts to open this morning so they were pretty much on overdrive in terms of excitement and that sort of pure joy and energy is infectious. It was so fun to watch them open everything.

Once we got home, we had breakfast (thank goodness Jack in the Box is open on Christmas!) and took a nap because we were exhausted! All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas.

Soooo many presents! This doesn't even include the ones that Santa brought!

Julia wearing one of her new Christmas shirts. 

Damien wearing one of his new Christmas shirts and also the toy parrot he was obsessed with all day.

Game time!

My sister-in-law, Mikallie, waiting for games to start.

Our friend, Chris, showing off his candy sleigh...

...and plotting during the game...

Damien waiting patiently to open presents. Why is it always the Daddy who is the last to get out of bed?! We always had to beg my dad to get up so we could open gifts and this morning, the poor kids had to beg Nate! Oh, and yes, those are birthday bags. It turns out kids don't care if the bags their presents are in say Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday so my mother in law's stash of gift bags came in super handy last night.

Damien, Mikallie and Julia showing off their pj's, still waiting for Nate to get up so they can open their presents. Such torture!

Finally, they got to open presents. Here they are showing off their new Santa hats. 

Damien picked out this gift himself from Walmart a few weeks ago, but we made him wait until Christmas to get it, so he was looking through everything to find it. He wanted it to be the first one he opened hehe. (It's a Nerf shotgun.)

The aftermath... There was no way we were going to get everything into the trunk of our car. Luckily Mikallie's dad, Mike, offered to drive the rest of the gifts to our house in the back of his pickup. Thanks Mike!

I hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours was!