Vrana Christmas

 Last but not least we celebrated with Jeremy's family!

Grandma and Grandpa with all the grandkids (except Spicka's new puppy Teddy!).

Looks like I did all the present piles in one picture this time!

It was fun to be with everyone!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Lincoln Christmas

We had a fun afternoon in Lincoln with my family.  Apparently I didn't keep track of my photos well though. Somehow I missed Thomas's present pile but got this amazing had picture.

I missed getting one of Sam opening something although he's in back of Philip's.

Did we do a grandkids only and that was it?  It seems unlikely but this is all I've got.

We had a nice dinner together too.  We tried potato sausage from the Wahoo Locker and it was pretty good!  We spent the night for another day of fun too.

Sometimes you just have to go with your crazy mom/aunt's idea of fun!

We had the traditional cookie decorating contest.  They had to be 3D this year.  I'm not really sure whose is whose but there's only 6 so I missed someone here too.

 And then we brought back the tradition of an ER trip on holidays.  It'd been a pretty good while since we did this one.  Probably Nick's Thanksgiving chin split a few years ago.  Philip was playing a maze that Levi got and missed the very last step.  He was squatted down but up on his toes.  He threw his hands up in defeat and Beth gave him a little push...and he fell over backward and hit his ear on a chair.  It split his ear and not even the ear that was already lumpy from cauliflower ear.  The ER was an amazingly short trip though.  And per the tradition from when he was four his "adventure" included hot chocolate but the picture isn't a jpeg so I can't put it in here. I think we can retire this tradition now.

Other than the minor injury we had a great time in Lincoln!

Christmas Morning

Since we'd been to Mass the night before we had a nice slow Christmas morning.

Santa was good to everyone.  Although some all of us are a little old for Santa he doesn't wrap his gifts so he's still coming through for everyone!

The family gifts didn't disappoint either.  The kids still seem to enjoy finding a gift for everyone.

Please note my amazing morning hair in the collage below!

The hair is not so amazing in this close up but Jeremy is cute.

Ready to go!

We had a great time together!

 That afternoon we headed to Lincoln to see my family.

Christmas Eve

We went to Mass Christmas Eve.  Sam was home by then too.

Although we put the tree up pretty early we hadn't gotten to decorating it.  But since we waited so long everyone was home to participate.

His 21st Christmas ornament.  After that no more till they have a significant life event.

We enjoyed our traditional appetizer dinner as well.  And I think we watched a movie.  Maybe Elf?
 

Christmas Preparations

Philip made these tasty, chewy gingerbread cookies with cream cheese frosting.  I really liked them!

Julia had a long list as usual.  She made like 7 kids of cookies and them made boxes for friends.  She made one kind a day.  The first day I came home to a kitchen in full swing...but I'd planned on making pizza for dinner and needed the oven.  After that she made the dough right after school and then put it in the fridge and baked them after dinner.  That worked better for the hungry brothers.

I just like this picture.  Homemade Dots are always a hit.

Nicholas dipped various things.  I think these are pretzel circles with the middle filled with peanut butter.  Yum!

These are brie cranberry bites with almonds on top. It's a keeper recipe.

A lot of the things ended up on our Christmas Eve appetizer buffet.  Along with some smoked cheeses.  Jeremy has been smoking lots of cheese and it's so good.

Ballapalooza

We scaled back Ballpalooza a little this year.  Still super fun and the ball jokes aren't old yet!

Somehow none of the other pictures involve people but Beth was here too!

Delicious! 

Vrana Christmas

We moved Vrana Christmas up from our usual New Year's day because both Samuel and Thomas went on SEEK and they were leaving the evening of the 31st.

The exoskeleton.  Again.

We had fun spending the day together.  

The boy cousins had a long game of football outside which Dylan enjoyed since I doubt he convinces Aliza and Clara to play it with him at home!  Thomas told silly stories much to Clara's delight, Aliza and Julia talked about girl things and a fun time was had by all!

And now we are done celebrating Jesus's birth!  Merry Christmas!!

December 26th

We stayed over at my parents and had more fun on the 26th.  The cookie shape this year was ginger bread houses.  Everyone got creative with their cookies.

I guess I only took a picture of mine and whoever's that is underneath it.  I tried getting creativity points by turning my house upside down so it could be an arrow.  But the (6 and 11 year old) judges were not impressed and I got the "looks like a squirrel would sleep in it" award.  Julia was very pleased to get 1st place.  I just asked Julia, turns out it's her 1st place cookie my arrow was pointing to!

 We had to head home after an early supper because Philip had a wrestling meet on the 27th.

Which reminds me, we did wonder if any of the neighbors had questions about the kid in the brown Carrhart jacket that ran around the block after every holiday meal.  It was Philip- he was supposed to lose 2 pounds over break so he could wrestle at 120.  He didn't make it in time for the meet on the 27th but he did make it in time for the following meet (which was a week and a half later).

Carlson Christmas

I tried to get these photos to load in chronological order twice but they're a little random so we'll have to deal.

My parents weren't sick or anything, the gap is so we can see the tree.

Can you guess what Elias had already opened?

Everyone enjoyed opening their gifts.

Philip got the hoodie from Julia that morning.  Little did we know it would become his exoskeleton. (Thanks to my high school boyfriend who first labeled the jacket I wore over everything everyday my "exoskeleton"- it is now part of our family vernacular.)

What was in this huge package?  Pillows!  Not sure Samuel has ever had his very own brand new pillow before.

Thomas had to punch out his gift.

My sisters got me a stuffed Mrs Vrana chicken.  So now there's Mrs. Vrana (just plain old me), Mrs. Vrana the chicken AND Mrs. Vrana the stuffed chicken.  By the way, Mrs. Vrana the chicken is doing well and has started to lay eggs.

Here's our present piles before we started opening!

After presents we had a delicious dinner and some family time.  It was great!