Christmas On-The-Go

After an awesome Christmas Eve with the Michel and Vanderbeck families, we drove to Lindsborg and stayed up late playing games with the Hensleys and Perkins'.  We spent the night in Lindsborg and woke up to a big, family Christmas morning.  As usual, Ledger woke up pretty early, so we didn't have to wait too long to open our stockings and presents.  It was really fun to spend Christmas morning with my family.

This is the best family picture with the dogs that we've ever taken!

Uncle Josh showing off his camo hunting gear.

Mom gave Emily and I a scrapbook that has pictures and memories that are nicely organized by year from when we were born to when we were married.  Chris and I enjoyed looking through mine.

Emily and Josh went through her scrapbook too!

After a fun morning, Chris, Ledger, and I returned home to have our own family Christmas.  We were running late, so it was a more rushed than I would have preferred.  But, Ledger opened his presents from Santa -- Mega Blocks and a Mega Blocks dump truck.  Chris and I opened stockings and the lotto ticket in his stocking won him $50!!

A quick shower and clothes change later, we were on-the-go again headed to the Michel household for Christmas lunch.  Grammie always makes an excellent spread with baked chicken and she definitely did not disappoint us this year!  Ledger hitched a ride with Uncle V in a Christmas tote bag.

After a yummy lunch, we packed up again to head to Tracy's house to celebrate with the Peterson family.  Her house was packed with people and food.  Ledger enjoyed playing with Faith's vacuum and his cousins: Edward, Aubrey, Isaac, Annika, and Faith.

For Christmas, everyone contributed one page to Grammie's scrapbook.  It turned out to be a very neat family treasure.  A few days prior to Christmas, Grammie was told that after 6 weeks of chemo and radiation for uterine cancer, her CT scan is completely clear.  What a blessing!

We had to leave the party after about an hour to get Ledger home for a nap.  (Mommy and Daddy napped too.)  After a few hours, we went back to the party to hang out with family.  Chris and Josh quickly disappeared into the basement to play X-Box with Ethan.  Ledger and I watched the family play Wii games --  Let's Dance, Tennis, and Bowling.  It was pretty funny to watch everyone dancing around.  About 7, we headed back to Lindsborg for another evening of games.

We tried to let Ledger stay up a little later than his usual scheduled bedtime of 7:30pm and finally put him to sleep around 8:45pm.  That plan completely backfired when Ledger woke up screaming around 10:30pm and was so overly tired that he couldn't get settled down.  So we packed ourselves up and drove back home.  Three very exhausted Michels finally got ourselves home and to bed just before midnight.  Phew!  What a Christmas, huh?