Christmas Day 2011

When we arrived at the Hanson's on Christmas Eve, everyone was anxiously waiting for us!  We didn't know they were waiting to start reading the Christmas story until we got there...so I felt kind of bad because it was like 9:30p when we got there!  But, it was beautiful.  We could feel the Spirit and we read a few verses, then sang a carol, then read some more.  My nephew Michael's wife Lexi has an incredible talent for singing, and sang O Holy Night, right there, on the spot, a capella.  It was beautiful.  Then we got all the little ones settled in bed...  It really was a peaceful night.

Early on Christmas morning, I woke up and went out to see if the kids were awake.  Nope!  Everyone was sound asleep.  I took advantage of these quiet moments and snapped a few pics of the tree, some ornaments and 2 nativities before the excitement began...

Once we finally got some kids up and moving (it STILL baffles me that we had to WAKE them up on Christmas!!!!!!) -- well, MOST of them got up... Jakob couldn't be bothered to get up.  So here are a few of the cousins sitting on the steps waiting to come up and check out the loot that Santa brought...

After Joshy examined everything, he ran back downstairs to get Jakob...so here they are...looking sleepy, but happy!

Drew got his wish of getting his very own DS.  Now he can play with the big dogs.

colorful candy canes just make it so much more fun!

this little sweetie slept through it all!

Christmas fell on a Sunday last year, so after briefly enjoying some goodies from our stockings and having fun playing with new toys, we all scrambled to get ready for church!

Since I never got around to sending a christmas card/picture (AGAIN) here ya go!  :)  After church I finally got a few pics of Aleks with his stocking and goodies from Santa... and his big brother!

my two blue-eyed heartbreakers

After grabbing some lunch we headed down to the basement for a gift opening extravaganza!  When you have a big family...and this was only about 1/2 of the Hansons...it can take a while to open all those gifts!  But it's so fun to spend time together and enjoy watching the little ones' excitement!

My sister in law made these awesome wood blocks for the kids to use while playing cards - there are slits cut in the top for them to put their cards... little hands sometimes have a hard time holding cards ya know?  genius!

 

Heather has a friend who crocheted these hats...had to grab a pic of all 3 of them together!

Uncle Todd and the Notorious Drew 'n Boots

He was napping most of the time...but joined us toward the very end...so I had to snap a pic!  I miss his faux hawk!

All in all, Christmas Day was really fun...  We enjoyed some yummy Egg Nog steamers (thanks Heather!) and played lots of fun games.  The kiddos had fun playing together with their cousins as usual.  We had fun with Ken & Beverly's family and it was also nice to spend some time with Brent's family since they live in Florida and we don't get to see them as often as we'd like.  Happy Christmas memories!