Not done with Christmas yet . .

I do love when Christmas is close to a weekend, but not on a weekend. Saturday mom's sisters and two of dad's cousins came over for another wonderful lunch and great companionship.

Then that evening after church our friend Dwayne came over and we exchanged gifts and watched a movie.

Christmas Evening

This evening Brian wanted to go to the deer lease, the boys weren't sure if they wanted to go, so we decided to make it a family outing. Brian & Kade sat in Brian's stand, and Noah & I sat in PoPo's stand. It wasn't too bad until the sun started going down and it got really cold. None of us saw any deer - we were looking even though it may not sound (or look) like it. Noah enjoy his new ipod, Kade talked to us quite a bit on the new 2-way radios, and I took pictures of trees and Noah & myself in the stand. At one point we wondered why Kade wasn't calling us on the radio, so we called them and found out he was asleep. Noah and I did see some cows, birds, and maybe a bobcat or a coyote, they were pretty far away and we couldn't tell for sure.

Christmas afternoon

After playing with the new toys at home, we took a few of them and went to Granny & PawPaw's house for lunch. I offered to have everyone over to our house, but Brian wanted to go to their house instead, no complaints from me. We had a wonderful traditional Christmas lunch of mom's chicken noodle soup, played with toys, rested, and played some more.

Christmas Morning

Santa was great again this year!!!
Oh the excitement. The boys woke up ready to tear into the gifts. I joked with them that we need to write Santa a letter and ask him to come at a different time so we could sleep late and wouldn't look so tired in all of our pictures. My second request was to have the toys already put together so we didn't have to. But I guess that's just part of the Christmas fun. . . . .
At first Noah was questioning why Kade's gifts were so big and his weren't, but then I reminded him that as you get older your gifts are smaller (and they cost much more too). He was perfectly fine with it when he opened the little box and saw an ipod. He told me several times through out the day that Santa was the greatest. Kade got all he asked for and much more, as did Brian and I.
After our gifts are unwrapped and Brooke & Beau are done opening at their house they come over and play with the boys and all the new toys. Beau said he loves having younger cousins because they still get fun toys.
Yes, we had another Wonderful Christmas!!!!

Christmas Eve with the S family

One of our traditions on Christmas Eve is that we all go to my parents early afternoon and take family pictures. The guys usually gripe about this, but after being part of the family for so many years, this year they just went with the flow, and we actually had all the pictures done in record time. After pictures we all attend mass together. After mass, we all go back to Granny & PawPaw's house, get comfortable, enjoy the great food, and then exchange gifts. I just love this time of the year - full of family fun.

The S Family

Mom (Granny), Daddy (PawPaw) & DanetteNicolette, Bernadette, Donnie (my brother)
Angelette, Juliette
Brooke, Diane, Ronnie, BeauDenise, Brian
Kade & Noah
Louis, Conner, Debbie
Danette, Diane, Denise, Debbie, Donnie

Cookies

While at work today I thought it would be a good idea to make and decorate cookies. Well before doing so we had to go to the grocery store, and that usually means eating out first. I should have taken cue from that and dropped the cookie idea, but no. I did cheat this year and buy the dough, after last years cookie making experience. So I baked the cookies and mixed up the icing. When they were cool the boys came in and started decorating. Brian even did one, then the commercial was over on the hunting show he was watching, so he left. Slowly the boys ventured in there with him and I was left decorating cookies all alone. But I guess there's nothing wrong with our boys being more interested in the hunting show than in decorating cookies. :)

Christmas at the L's

We had Christmas at PoPo & MoMo's house today. We had it today because the girls will be with their mom on Christmas, but MoMo wasn't here because Gram had knee surgery so she's taking care of her. We all had a wonderful time

Fifteen

Happy 15th Birthday Katelynn

Band Concert

This evening we had our Christmas band concert at school. Noah & Katarina being in the 5th grade are in their first year of band and they did a great job for their first ever concert. They played Sleigh Ride and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas.Juliette plays in the 6th and 7th grade group, they played Silent Night and Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer. They did a great job too.Nicolette and Katelynn play in the high school group. They had more challenging songs and did an awesome job too.