The Powell's: December happenings

December was relatively uneventful until Christmas. We did get a night of gingerbread house making and The Grinch in, and also got to go see lights and have dinner with our friends the Matthews up in Preston, ID one night (forgot to take the camera, but the display was awesome!)

(RANDOM: Deeg decided one day to line up all of his cars on the back of the couch! I thought it was kind of funny, and he was pretty picky about who touched them and which ones you could move for the whole day.)

Christmas Eve was spent at mom & dad Jorgensen's house with all my siblings, their kids, my aunt Stacy and Grandma and Grandpa Jorgensen. We began the night by feeding the kids pizza and playing pin the nose on the snowman and a little Christmas cupcake walk. After they were all in their Christmas jammies, we looked up Santa on the Norad tracker to see where he was at, then we let them watch a little Christmas special movie on Netflix while the adults ate good food upstairs. After the movie was over, the kids all cuddled up in bed while Grandpa read them a bedtime story. Once the kids were in bed, we migrated to the basement to enjoy a night full of exciting games. We had our gift exchange and I ended up with the coveted gift of one of Grandpa Jorgensen's handmade burl bowls (I'll write a separate post on Grandpa's work!) After the gift trade, we played a super fun game called "Akward Family Moments". It was especially fun because my grandparents and aunt Stacy were there to add variety to the mix! We played most of the night, then cleaned up and got things ready for Christmas morning.

I found this T-shirt for Brett and knew he had to have it! (he works for the sewage plant, so he is usually at the forefront of any "poop" jokes in the house!)

Christmas morning was utter chaos, but so fun! 10 kids and 10 adults all opening presents at the same time gets a little wild! Everyone was so happy, especially Griff... he has been on cloud 9 non-stop since Sunday morning, laughing at just about everything and carrying a huge grin! Christmas is so much more magical when you have little kids that get so excited!

Griffin trying out Cullen's new bike and squishing Afton.

After finishing up at the Jorgensen house we ventured a mile down the road to Mom and Dad Powell's house. We had a nice breakfast, opened more presents and opened all the toys to play for a while. The boys' "Big" Chistmas gift was too big to take to Jorgensen's after storing it at Powell's house, so we waited for that one until we went there.

I don't know a lot about Christmas day from about 11:00 on because I had some aweful stomach bug and decided to more or less sleep with no interruption from then until about 7 that night. The sleep was just what I needed and I felt much better on Monday morning, and was able to get up and play with the boys and Adam.

Today (Tuesday) is Deegan's birthday! We celebrated with a few more presents to open this morning before heading out to breakfast at Angie's. The waitress was really sweet and got the staff to come sing to Deeg and brought out a HUGE cinnamon roll for us to share. After Breakfast, we spent the morning searching every store imaginable for a cowboy hat and stick horse... to no avail! How can it be so hard to find those? (we found hats, but they were $40 or more, and for a 4 year old, that seems a bit steep!) Adam brought balloons home for Deeg just before Grandma and Grandpa Powell came up for a lunch at McDonald's play place and spent a few hours at the house playing. We finished off the day with a nap (Deeg fell asleep on the way home from running a couple errands) and are now watching The Lion King (new birthday present) before bed. It's been a GREAT few days, but I'm anxious to get life back to normal!

We wrapped Deegan's presents in our new phone boxes... he was so excited to open the first present and think he was getting a phone (major let down when you realize the new phone box is holding just Batman underwear, but he liked them anyway.) !!!