Christmas Day

We woke up at my parent's house, opened presents, then headed across the street for our annual brunch with the Staggs.  After brunch, my family went to our house, we spent the day relaxing, eating delicious food, and playing games.  A great low key day!

Snuggles on Sophia's new bean bag chair

kid pile on Sophia

brunch kiddos

checking out their presents from Santa and stockings

Cousin picture

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve began with Candle light service at church and ended with the crab feed at Michelle's.  Always such a special day!

All dressed up

Cousins at church

Cutest little elf

enjoying our crab dinner

1st generation

2nd generation

3rd generation

Rider Christmas

Remote control cars, Harry Potter stuff, and poop emoji pillows were the highlight of Rider Christmas this year.

Holly sent him an Elf on the shelf that he can play with, along with a pet reindeer.  He made a sleigh for them and took them everywhere with us for a few days.

Excited about her Harry Potter companion books

and her poop emoji pillow

Everyone had fun taking turns with the remote controlled cars

Izzy's 10th birthday

Izzy celebrated her birthday at the temporary outdoor ice rink in Hillsboro.  Sophia LOVES ice skating and picks it up quickly.  She was flying around that rink in no time.

The crew

1 person fell and took a bunch of girls down with her

After skating, the girls put on shows for us on a stage

Crazy Christmas lights

We heard about this house that has a crazy Christmas light display, so we took the kids on a hunt one night to find it.

Crazy!

Both kids brought their cameras and had fun taking pictures. 

 Lincoln is trying to get a selfie here.

Rider Extended Christmas

We have learned that we have to leave our car at the top of our neighborhood when the first signs of snow start.  If we don't, we have no way of getting out of our neighborhood until the snow melts, our street is too steep to drive up, even with chains, snow tires or all wheel drive. Luckily, we ditched our car at the top during the second winter blast or we would have missed out on Rider Christmas!  We made it up to Longview and even had to stay 2 nights up there (plus a 3rd night at my sister's house before we could get back down to our house).

Showing off their gloves from Great Grandma

The girls built a big snowman

The little boys watched

Apparently buffalo check was the way to dress this year!

Danielle and I showed up in the exact same dress!

Joel was the lucky winner of this kitty shirt

The great grandkids

The whole crew (minus 3)

Snow (x2)

I'm just going to bunch all of the December snow pictures into 1 post.  We spent the snowy days building a snowman and sledding a lot!

On day 1 we were super excited about the snow

Night sledding down the neighbors driveway

The neighbors driveway was perfect for Lincoln.  Our big hill that the big kids sled down is too scary for him.

Daddy and Lincoln

He would go down about halfway down the big hill, he liked to lay down on his sled

So fun to have one of your besties live around the corner, especially on snow days!

Story Book Lane

We had to volunteer one night at story book lane out at Alpenrose, for Sophia's softball team.  It was a light night because of the ice and snow, so our jobs were pretty easy.  The kids took little breaks and ran around checking everything out.

Making cookies to sell in the bakery

little delivery girl

Bethie (Sophia's teammate), Sophia, and Lincoln sitting in Santa's sleigh