We hosted our families for the holidays this Christmas from December 15th-January 6th. We baked, ate delicious food, laughed, played games, dried many "he/she's not sharing" tears, shopped till we LITERALLY dropped, and generally had a great family holiday.
It was a crazy, chaotic, would-not-have-it-any-other-way Christmas!
This picture is what 14 people, 8 adults and 6 children (aged 8 and under) looks like...minus my brother who is taking the picture...did I mention we were all living under one roof?!
It took me a few weeks to recover and put our house back together so you will have to forgive my Christmas post in February!
A typical Bohay Christmas = presents spilling out from under the tree and taking over the room. Santa (in similar fashion) also leaves overflowing stockings. We must have been very good this year!
A 20 ft ceiling means we always have a tall Christmas tree, but it also makes for an interesting challenge when the pot lights require changing. We took advantage of the extra male hands in the house and rented a 16 ft ladder to undertake this task! Thanks for the help Uncle Ross and Gido!
Better you than me!
Better you than me!
This was also the first year we had no tears in our Santa photo...
Check out this pic from 2006...
hilarious!
hilarious!
The family Christmas card...I really enjoy designing these each year.
I took 600+ pictures over the holidays and have tried hard not to overwhelm this post by experimenting with photovisi and smilebox to create less overwhelming photo collages.
Christmas morning the noise level in the house increases 10 decibels from the squeals of excitement. Our Christmas tradition is to open our stockings from Santa (at first light) followed by a delicious brunch (including Baba's famous wifesaver breakfast)...we then spend the better part of the afternoon opening gifts after Baba and Jordan have their annual disagreement about how long the turkey needs to cook! Good times!
Random shots from Christmas day...
Christmas Dinner means Jordan's world class gravy (supervised by Baba) and Ross's expert carving skills. Jordan insists on a farm fresh over-sized turkey cooked just until the timer goes off. If Baba had her way it would cook another 3 hours hence the annual how long should the turkey cook discussion!
Our oldest nephew (seen here) looks forward to visiting partly due to Uncle Jordan's cereal cupboard. It is regularly stocked with Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, Captain Crunch and any other sugary cereal one might crave...yum! We also celebrated his 8th birthday (he is a Christmas Eve baby) at Medieval Times. Our Yellow Knight threw Middle Child a flower and she was so excited she said, "Mommy, I'm going to remember this night forever!
The kids had fun playing in the snow (a novelty for our BC cousins). We discovered we have the perfect back yard for sledding...just watch out for the fence...
The first thing Biggest Boy did every morning was change the number on the Santa advent calendar.
couch potatoes...
three generations...
hangin' with Uncle Mike...
The kids were Shepherd's in our church Christmas concert. Biggest Boy was mortified to be on stage and stood there motionless, except for the occasional yawn. Middle Child on the other hand was in her glory and the second picture is of her being directed off stage when she would not leave!
The guys went to a World Juniors hockey game in Buffalo (along with 18,000 other Canadian fans). They waited in line at the border for several hours but still said it was worth it to watch Canada defeat the Czechs.
Our nephew is obsessed with cows...can you tell?
While having our cousins visit is fun...after the first week it leads to a lot of tears and pouty faces. I'm convinced Middle Child will one day rule the world with hers!
Monopoly anyone? This happens to be Biggest Boy's favourite game...
I blame these for my holiday weight gain. Really, could you resist?
Merry belated Christmas from our family to yours.
All the best in 2011.
Very nice....wow, that's a whole lotta action!
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