Christmas Eve, Morning, Day and Night

Christmas Eve we spent the whole day with my parents and Aunt, brother, and Grandmother. We had some laughs, some wonderful chicken lasagna and then we went to church for the Children's service. My brother came over later that night and helped Santa Jeff with some last minute assembly. We have a tradition in our family that every year, we take a photo with this Santa to see how much we have changed in a year. There is one every year of Jay and I since we were little and we started to spread the tradition to the kids.

Avery & Santa

Lillie and Santa

Sitie and the kids (a few days after Christmas in our new Christmas duds)

Aunt O and Grafton (what a great photo!)

Avery, Grampsie, Lillie and BIG AL!! (A few days before Christmas)

Jay or "scrubs" as we now call him (he just got a job in the medical equipment field)

The girls with Aunt Ashley (Jay's fiance). This was the week before Christmas since Ashley was with her parents for Christmas day.

It was quite a chore keeping the girls upstairs on Christmas morning. Uncle Jay spent the night in Avery's room and as he tells it, at 4am it was a quiet whisper of "Uncle Jay" and he opened one eye to see two little silhouettes in the door way. That was of course followed by a 5am wake up the same way and then finally at 7am. Avery stayed in Lillie's room on the "top bed" as Lillie called her trundle bed. That of course has lasted a little longer than just Christmas Eve. She still wants to stay in there a few more nights and Lillie could not be more excited.

The girls stayed upstairs with Kit and then finally came down once everyone was there and the unwrapping frenzy began. Avery tore into hers and Lillie was a little more reserved. Grafton joined in the fun in the beginning but then fell asleep for the better part of the madness!

Lillie and her Tri-cycle from Santa

The girls with their Santa gifts
Our Family Christmas Morning

Grafton's 1st Christmas

Lillie giving her little brother Christmas kisses

The unwrapping frenzy has begun

Uncle Jay purchased this bib for Grafton.......oh my!
The girls get musical with the new keyboard from Uncle Michael and maracas from Santa
Daddy and his girls on Christmas morning

Poppy and Lillie

Grammy, Lillie and Sitie telling secrets

Grammy and Avery

Grafton sleeping on Christmas morning
Uncle Jay getting the "do her hair and add extensions" doll he got the girls for Christmas (that surprisingly looks a lot like Ashley which was his inspiration for the gift. The girls love to play with and style Ashley's hair)
Avery getting ready to style the dolls hair

Jim, Kit, Mom, Avery & Jay on Christmas morning

The boys: Jim, Grafton & Jeff

Grafton and Uncle Michael with Sitie

We had our usual Christmas morning breakfast and then we went to spend Christmas day with my in-laws. The highlight for the girls was their Cousin Keelan. She is 1 year old and they just loved playing with her.

Avery got a Leapster from Gran & Poppy and then stopped talking to the rest of us while she played her game all night!

Lillie and her new MP3 player (Jenny pointed our that she looks like a DJ spinning records because she had the headphones on one ear one time)

Avery, Lillie & Keelan after "bowling" in the hallway (the pillow on the door was Avery's idea to keep from smashing the door with the plastic bowling ball!)

This was the funniest. You cannot see all of Keelan's face but she is laughing really hard. Lillie would tackle her and hug her and she would just laugh and laugh. Not to worry, those brown feet belong to my brother-in-law. He was in charge of watching them while we got dinner ready and I am sure he needed a nap after all of that tour of duty.

Jenny, Kit & Leah
My Favorite Mother-In-Law (this is actually a decent picture of me)

Jeff "helping" Jim in the kitchen

From the moment Keelan woke up from her nap, the girls were running around with her crawling after them. She just laughed and squealed and came back for more. I am sure she was pretty worn out!

We had a great Christmas. We are all so blessed and had so much to celebrate. My Father-in-Law was all fixed up with bypass surgery and is feeling great, my brother is engaged to a wonderful woman and this was Grafton's 1st Christmas. All and all, we are a very blessed bunch and 2009 looks to be a great year! Looking forward to may more blogging days and as my cousin Matt wished us, "Many More Curlee Days to come!"

Love to all of my loyal blog readers and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!!!