After opening gifts on Christmas morning, we started preparing for our trip to Greenville to celebrate with Nate's side of the family. It was amazing to think we hadn't seen his brother's family since June! We truly need to get together more often. If we did, maybe it wouldn't be so crazy. Nate's brother Alan has 3 kids - Drew 7 (8 in March), Reese 5 (6 in February) & Trey 3 (4 in June). Shelby and Reese are the same age and Morgan and Trey are the same. And they all love to torture Drew! If I had $1 for every time I hear, "Aunt Jill, Drew...." I could have paid for Christmas! They have a lot of fun together and I suppose they wouldn't be kids if they didn't torture one another at time. On Christmas day evening, we celebrated with Nate's dad, step mom and brother. The girls always get fun stuff for their American Girl dolls there and this year was no exception. They know the boxes so excited they are as soon as the paper comes off. So reusing an AG doll box to wrap up something else would not be a good idea for them. :)
Drew and Uncle Nate spent any free time they had playing Nintendo DS. One night was into the wee hours while everyone else was sound asleep. Nate had a hard time beating Drew in some of the games.
Saturday morning we headed to Nate's Grandpa and Grandma Metzger's house. The big man Santa always makes an appearance. The nice thing about this Santa is he is a Christian so he always has the kids sit down and he goes over the meaning of Christmas before they open their gifts. Then one by one he reaches into his gift bag and calls the kids up. They sit on his lap and open their gifts. Shelby and Morgan have never been afraid of the jolly old man and have fun when he comes. Of course, my camera would not work and my video camera was full so the only pics I have were taken on my cell phone. So they are a little blurry and are not centered.
Nate's cousin Mark brings his girlfriend Christina with him. Shelby wanted to know why they weren't married. I guess she was the only one with enough guts to ask what everyone else thinks! Come on Mark, what are you waiting for! Girlfriend or wife, the girls both had a lot of fun with Christina. Since they live in California, Christmas is usually the only time we see them.
Sunday morning we headed to Nate's mom and step dad's house. This is a smaller crowd so it is a little more relaxed. We enjoy a nice brunch and then have gift opening. Some more playing before we head home. Morgan and Trey had a lot of fun playing together all weekend. Here they are playing a game of Connect Four before brunch.
Uncle Al was doing some interesting things here to entertain the kids. As you can see, Morgan is amazed. Reese and Trey on the other hand look like they have seen this act before!
Although Shelby and Reese are the same age and for the most part have the same interests, they have very different personalities. Shelby acts a lot more like her cousin Drew. Here are the two of them hanging out.
That is a lot of fun crammed into one weekend. Morgan was asleep five minutes after we left to head home. She slept the entire way. Shelby held off to about Springfield and then she was out until we got home. Unfortunately, we landed about 8:15. They were no where near to being ready for bed so that was the beginning of some messed up sleeping habits. Good thing we had another week before Shelby went back to school.
Well, that finishes up Christmas 2009. Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment