My holiday

I blogged about our immediate family Christmas celebration, and it was nice. The kids were all actually pleasant MOST of the day. Well, at least after I went hoarse from screaming at them to shut up.
Sunday we drove 45 miles per hour to Donnie's sister's house. We had great little snacky foods. I made little penguins out of black olives, carrots and dip, so cute! (Devon later killed them, but that's another story.) We had so much fun watching Sam and Austin. They both loved walking around pulling the tissue paper out of the gift bags. They didn't much care about the presents. Sam loved Austin's toy from Uncle Dean and Austin loved Sam's toy from Uncle Dean. We had fun being goofy, and watched the Vikings football game. I am pretty sure Daryl and Daphne loved the AB CD shirt we gave Austin from Trendy Tadpoles, they sure did laugh about it. We had a great time.

I really enjoyed my family the most though. We all met at my dad's house. Thankfully three of us "kids" live in the area, or it would have been bad. All 5 of us kids were there, 4 with a spouse, and all 17 of the grandkids were there, too. So, 28 people all together. We should have tried to get a picture, but it was mass chaos.

Donnie was working, so he kind of had to hole up in the bedroom, but he popped his head out from time to time, like for the Klub and lefse, and the presents. We had spent Christmas eve overnight and opened stockings there. And we had so much fun that Cody and Hope-Anne didn't want to leave, so those two and I stayed another night and day. Without Sam and Trinity! I had a day without little ones!

Ok, on to the fun. Oh, I knew I should have been taking notes all weekend, because so many funny things happened that I said I was going to blog. I think I dropped something and quickly said "That didn't happen." as all eyes were on me, and my sister in law Samantha busted up laughing. At least I amused her! She's wonderful, she brightens up our family. I wish I could remember what she said that cracked me up.

I got Ma Quelf for Christmas. She is definitely going to love it! Her sisters are a crazy bunch, so I know they will have as much fun with it as we did.

Ok, so we are opening presents. One. By. One. for 28 people. We get to the end, the biggie. The Little Giant ladder for the Big Kahuna. This is what his face looked like. Yes. He didn't even crack a smile. Well, gee, lets all spend $200 on dad again next year. Ma was ticked. Turns out he thought all along that he was getting some sort of topper for his truck, and was in shock that he was wrong. Believe me, that is a big deal for Dad. The fact that the ladder sat in the main part of the house in plain site and he didn't see it made it even funnier for us and maddening for him, lol.

I had such a great time visiting with my family. My sister gave me a beautiful heart shaped piece of glass with a lovely sentimental Sisters poem in it. So not like her, I loved it, it is totally me, but threw me that she bought it! But was was funny was that the night before she had been talking about how I always beat her up when she was little! I didn't beat her up. I may have slapped her once or twice, but I never beat her up. Slapping isn't OK, but for the record I didn't beat her up. The boys did that. Not that she didn't have it coming, because she did. She's like 27 and still called "The Brat."

As soon as we decided to play Quelf my brother Chris jumped up and started packing up the kids as fast as he could. That turned into some teasing, until he turned mighty red. He couldn't take Quelf, no way.

Shane and Samantha being here was great, but it was extra wonderful that they had both of their boys for Christmas this year. I had never met Cameron, Samantha's son, and I hadn't seen Ethan in years and years.

Dad and Shane took Cody four wheeling on the lake and then took Hope-Anne snowmobiling. Then we finally came home. It was great.