On Christmas Morning, we wake up. My mom has staretd a freakin wonderful new tradition where she has the kids run around with bells and wake everyone up. The kids were up at 5:30 AM and my mom held them off until 6:30 AM. None of the adults were too jolly, and Emily didn't really appreciate it either.

Remeber the pickle air-freshener that wound up in our home. Well, it surfaced again. It started out with my Dad putting it in the bedroom we were staying at, hidden behind a desk. From there, I put it in Susan's room, who then put it in Jon's room, who eventually put it back in my room. I hate the smell of pickels.

Jon's daschund (not prounounced dash-hound, but dock-sin) stretch is annoying and likes to bite kids. We remind him of this often and poor Beth is caught in the middle of it all. Jon likes to taunt and tease all of his nieces and nephews in the way only an uncle can do it. He has no kids for us to torment, so we torment his dog, which he brings everywhere with him. Jon wants my parents to afford stretch the same status as the grandchildren, per the following picture (jon was hiding behind my dad's chair, propping up the dog so he could be in the grandchildren picture):


Christmas morning at my parent's house is HUGE. My Mom literally starts shopping for Christmas the day after, and puts a ton of thought into what she gets everyone, and for 18 people, that's no small task - I can barely buy for Cathie. After that, we have a huge breakfast, and spend the next two hours trying to pull everything together to get ready to move on to Cathie's parents house.

Take a look at the pictures here.