And for the finale of December, here in February, we went to Pennsylvania to see my dad’s side of the family. Celia unfortunately got sick and on the trip down was actually asking to get back into her car seat and rest which is very unlike her, but very convenient for having an easy trip for the rest of us. Christmas Eve she was unfortunately running a low fever, but we gave her some medicine and tried to take it easy with her as we celebrated at my cousins Sue and Jeff house and went to church. The girls were great at church and even went up to the front to hear the children’s part of the story. Zeke, Sue and Jeff’s gigantic dog was a big attraction for the girls although they were wary at first and all had to learn how to get along with each other.

We all enjoyed some yummy food, and exchanging gifts. We got the girls home a bit earlier this year and they crashed into sleepiness quickly and we joined them soon too. We couldn’t fit all the presents with us in the car for Christmas morning so we left our own presents at home and just exchanged with the Graybills that morning so it was a short and sweet time to appreciate our gifts one at a time.

Look how nicely those two hold up their stockings and pose! Maybe in 15 years I’ll get that too, instead I got this:

But Josie was feeling magnanimous and posed for me in front of the big glass windows.

After presents we had a delicious Christmas brunch.

And we otherwise had a lot of time to hang out, visit, play with our new presents and eat cookies for the rest of the day and the next. We had snow on Christmas Eve and so it was a pretty white Christmas. We also had another storm the following day which prevented us from doing as much visiting as we might have done with other people, but Josie and I got to build a snowman. The kids next door had been out sledding and made some ‘sleigh tracks’ down the backyard and there actually are some deer around too behind the house so we had some cool tracks in the snow for a Christmas morning story.

We spent a lot of time, grownups included, playing with the magnatiles we had brought with us. They built a tower up to the ceiling after going through many different design options to get enough stability and reach. Todd asked why he didn’t get these toys for Christmas.

All too soon it was time to go home and we had a pretty good trip home again, although my mom flew and it took her as long to get home as it did us because of delayed flights. The girls were quite patient and enjoyed the toys and the attempts of me and my dad to entertain them.

Once we had gotten home, we took a day to recover and then had our third Christmas present opening at our house again under the tree. This is the big stash of loot Josie had definitely been waiting for. Somehow it does all fit into the house though.

Jordi and I got some wonderful new warm blankets that are huge for our bed which we’ve been really enjoying. Plus new luggage for our fairly frequent trips. The girls got way too many things and we’ve been doing a lot of art with the supplies we got as well. But of course, they also just played in the giant boxes we got too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2013 at 10:18 am by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.