Christmas

So, being home for Christmas was so great this year (especially after our travel fiasco) On Christmas Eve we headed over to the Farrell's as we always do, for dinner and a yankee swap.

Then we went to church with them in Pownal (the same church that Dan and I sang at a few weeks ago) I got a few pictures of Leah singing in the children's choir.


Then we went back home to start our Christmas Eve festivities. Janna is pictured here, demonstrating how to tie a tie. What a talented girl.


awww...brotherly love.

And I even got some cuddle time with Dad. Lucky me.

So, our new tradition...as of a few years ago, is that mom gets us all new pajamas on Christmas Eve. It's a fun tradition, and last year I started buying mom new pajamas too, so she can have new ones as well. I decided that maybe we should have a picture of the 4 of us, which prooved more difficult than it should have been. For those of you who have seen the Easter picture video...this was of the same caliber. It's too bad it wasn't on video too. Trying to get those boys to have good looks on their faces, is nearly impossible--especially Matt, who wouldn't hold still. We took probably 15 pictures, trying to get a good one. And we didn't get one good picture. The only one that I think might have been good, was blurry. :(
Matt and Alex pushed Janna and I backwards at one point...so here are our rears. Nice huh?

Another attempt at a good picture. Great! except for Matt...again.

Then Christmas day was great. Grammy and Dick made it down by about noon. But poor Grammy was sick with what I think is probably the flu. Like what we have all had around here.

For Grammy this year, I wanted to have a painting of her house done. She has a winter-time painting. And she happened to mention to me once that she had always wanted a summer-time one done too. So, I asked my Adopted Director in Mary Kay, Julie, who is an artist, if she thought she could do it for me. So Julie and her son Ryan (who is also an artist) did the picture for me. Ryan drew it, and Julie painted it. It came out beautifully.
Christmas night, we have a tradition of going to LLBean (my siblings and I) because we always get gift certificates. So the 4 of us, and Laura, headed down to Beans. We were hoping to meet up with the Boutan's down there too (Renee, Christian and his wife Maddy) but we hadn't been able to get a hold of them. Finally, they called and said they'd meet us back at the house--only to surprise us in the store. It was so great to see them. We didn't get to hang out for long, it was already after midnight, and we were all exhausted, and Alex had to get on the road to head back to NY. Yup...in the middle of the night. Poor guy. So at 1am or so, Alex headed off. He made it back to NYC around 6:30. Grampi met him at his apartment, to help him unload the car, and to drive the car back to Queens, so Alex could just go straight to bed. He had to be to work by noon.