Tidbits: Christmas at Nana & Papa's

I love Christmas at my parents' house - it's so fun to be able to continue on with the traditions that I hold dear from my childhood. It doesn't matter how old we are or how the group has changed, some things are just the way they were when I was a little girl, and there is something very comforting about that.

With the exception of a nasty cold that made its way around the family, Christmas day couldn't have gone any better in my opinion. I just wish everybody could have felt well!

Here is Ryan on Christmas Eve, hanging his stocking with Nana:

We had a rather full house this year - 12 stockings barely fit!

Another Christmas Eve tradition: Grammie reading "The Night Before Christmas":

13 people yielded quite a lot of presents under Nana & Papa's tree:

I couldn't wait to see Ryan's reaction to that tree, and he certainly didn't disappoint :)

Here he is pointing out his stocking, ready to dig in!

... and stocking time!

The babies looked so cute in their Christmas outfits that we had to get some photos - here is the first of many Kaeden-Atticus photo shoots that week!

...and of course we needed some with big cousin Ryan:

Grammie with her great grandsons:

.. .and Kaeden smiling for somebody (can't remember who!):

Ryan was very good about being patient through breakfast, showers, and getting dressed. Finally, it was time to open the presents under the tree. Ryan would have been the perfect elf if he could read. He loved handing out presents to everybody, but he needed assistance to tell him who they were for. He was quite particular about everybody having one each time around - luckily we were able to even them out during nap time so that he wouldn't realize that not everybody gets the same number of presents. After one round, he stopped in the middle of the room, looked around, and said "Everybody good?" We just cracked up! He was such fun to be around all day and was better than I expected at being patient in between opening his presents.

Here he is with one of his favorite gifts of the day: a duplos fire station!

Uncle Dain gave him a real digital camera (for kids if you couldn't tell), which he showed some interest in initially, but got very excited about when it was time to watch "The Grinch" later in the day - he was determined to take a picture of the Grinch... so funny! This continued on for the rest of the week, that every time we watched a video, he had to have his camera ready. I guess real life isn't as exciting to him.