Christmas 2015

We had a very Merry Christmas! 

There was just enough snow on Christmas Eve for Grandpa to pull the kids around on the sled behind his ATV. There aren't any hills to slide down, but they still got the idea. It was fun for about 15 minutes until they got cold. I took one ride around with Jack, but there wasn't quite enough snow to make it a smooth ride with my weight. It didn't matter to the boys at all that it was only an inch or so. They had fun with the sleds and then just throwing snowballs around.

After that, we had a great dinner and played "Heads Up!" on my phone with everyone. 

Christmas morning dawned pretty early. We started breakfast around 6:30am and gifts shortly thereafter. The boys started with their stockings while they waited for everyone else to get fully moving.

Then, there were lots of gifts. It took about an hour for everyone to get through they gifts. Everyone got lots of good stuff. 

After the gifts, there were lots of toys to help kids with. The adults were kept busy putting batteries in things, helping read instructions, building lego kits, and more. Then, it was time to get the dinner started. We had a great home cured ham, an 18 pound prime rib, potatoes, green beans, squash, rolls, and more...It was yummy! We had 15 people on hand for dinner and more that came over later for leftovers later.

After dinner, Mike was conscripted into taking family pictures. Here are a few of them:

It was hard to get everyone looking and smiling at the same time! And the boys were upset they had to take their hats off, but still they turned out pretty good. We got a few smaller group shots too:

Doesn't Haydn look pretty in her Christmas dress? Chase and Braidyn are also getting big!

We tried hard to get a picture with all the grandkids too, but some of them were done cooperating and didn't want their  picture taken anymore. They did not turn out well. Here's the best of the bunch. Look at those faces! Oh well...

Overall, we had a great time and were all tired by the end of the day. Then Saturday morning, we had to pack up and head home. We had better weather coming back than going, but we ended up getting stuck in ski traffic coming off Mt. Hood, which delayed out arrival into Portland by about 3 hours. We literally took 2 hours to go about 5 miles passing the ski resort, so we didn't reach the outskirts of Portland until after 9pm.  It was a long day and a late night.