After spending the beginning of Christmas break with my family, the next days would be with Ben's family. On December 22, we attended a memorial service for Aunt Julie, who passed away from cancer earlier in the month. It was a beautiful service and Seth and Sam couldn't stop raving about what an amazing woman Aunt Julie was after hearing her eulogy. Seth kept saying, "Wow! Julie really lived a great life!" She really was an amazing woman who will be missed dearly.
December 23 we celebrated Christmas with the Luscombe side of the family. It was a bit subdued, as we were all missing Julie. However, a highlight of the night was "Christmas Song Pictionary," in which the young folks team + Aunt Joann won a clear victory with absolutely no cheating...well, that may not be all true, but we did all laugh a lot.
Cool new book from Uncle Bruce, Bryan and Kelsey
The boys hanging out with Uncle Levi
Cousins stair picture
Nate, Holly and kids came back to our house for the beginning of a two-night sleepover (Ellie and Josh were thrilled). We all went to church together on Christmas Eve morning and exited the service to a winter wonderland. We still can't believe that we got the blessing and surprise of snow for Christmas! It ended up snowing three inches!
Family pictures in the snow! (Yes, I have a tank top on...it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for a cute picture)
Holly, Nathan and girls (in their cute Christmas dresses!)
Isn't Hailey just the sweetest?
We grabbed a quick lunch and the twins quickly bundled up to play in the snow. (Sam)
The did a good job shoveling the driveway for their grandparents.
Seth
Josh and Ellie
Snow balls!
Making a mini-snowman
I don't know who had more fun throwing snowballs: the adults or the kids
Football in the snow
Josh and Ellie decided to claim the fort as their hideout for the snowball war
Josh
I sure do love and miss this yard!
Nate and Holly
Ben and I
Getting ready to ambush Grandma and Grandpa, Caleb and Levi
Uncle Caleb joined the fighting
I love this picture! We were all just so happy about the snow.
We finally took a break from the snow and came inside to take pictures and then open presents.
I love this picture: there's just so much joy when we're all together.
Great picture of Grandparents and Grandkids
It's hard to get all the "kids" to fit in front of the tree now!
And even harder to get the little ones to smile for the camera
Hugs for brother to say "thank you"
Holly and little Hailey Rose
The big excitement of the night was Sam and Seth's BIG gift.
We really wanted it to be a surprise that we bought them violins. Diane had the idea to wrap both boxes as one big package so that they couldn't see the shape of them individually. Violins were the only thing that the twins requested for Christmas and we led them to believe that we would be buying used ones in Mexico upon returning from Christmas. It was such a joy to buy them something they were so excited and surprised by!
Sammy
Seth
Once the violins were unwrapped, we had the problem that no one in the family is at all musical: we couldn't tune the instruments. So, we had to settle for watching cool videos of violinists playing and wait for the boys' violin teacher to tune them when they returned to school.
The whole family spent the night at our house on Christmas Eve and we had a slow, fun Christmas morning together. Then we headed to Aunt Tani's house for Christmas dinner with the Morris side of the family. It was a small crowd this year: only about 45 (yes, the family is that big!). The kids had an absolute blast with their cousins.
This year for the Christmas skit Seth and Sam were the wisemen and they recruited Deedo and Daddy to be camels.
They made a grand entrance
I feel like the quality of the skit was really top notch, especially with the addition of costumes this year.
That's a whole lot of cousins!
Christmas dinner at the almost all boy table...it was not a quiet affair.
A thus ended our eight straight days of decorating, partying, family, friends and none-stop fun. December 26th we stayed home all day in our sweats with absolutely no plans. We let the kids open their stocking and just hung out and played games and read. It was a great day.
Little did we know that the next day we would be doing much of the same thing, as Seth got a fever. Not long after, Sam got a fever, and then Ben got sick as well. Unfortunately, we spent the rest of our Christmas break recovering from what we think was probably influenza. Not ideal, but we were so grateful for the first week where we partied hard!
We flew home early on January 1, so on New Year's Eve we shut down the house and headed to Ben's parents to spend the night. They live really close to the airport and it would give us some more time to spend with them before leaving for Mexico.
The boys love hanging out with their uncles; I have a fond memory of Caleb playing "crab tag" with the boys. He's such a great uncle.
Unfortunately, when we decided to spend the night at Jeff and Diane's, we didn't factor in that the boys' influenza was at the "coughing" stage and that they would cough basically all night (we were all sleeping in the same room). Overall, between coughing kids, New Year's Eve fireworks, and getting up at 4:30 for our flight, Ben and I got maybe 2 hours of sleep. Thankfully, the Lord granted us a very merciful travel day and we were able to basically sleep walk through the airports and flights without a single hitch. When we arrived in Monterrey, it was 34 degrees...the same as Portland. We were freezing! But, it was good to be back to our Mexico home!
We left all our winter jackets in Portland, so the blankets were used for warmth!
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