Christmas Day: The Finish Line

After Christmas morning breakfast and gifts, we left my mom's house a little before noon, if memory serves me right. We made a brief stop at home to drop off the gifts we had just received (we needed the room!) and began to the drive to spend Christmas with my in-laws at my sister-in-law's house. Nora napped for a good part of the ride, the weather was great, and we made good time (the roads were empty!). It was time for more family fun!

It was actually quite relaxing. The cousins played together and watched movies (even though they couldn't agree on what to watch), and us adults were able to talk and catch up, which doesn't always happen during our normal, whirlwind visits.

We received more gifts--the majority of which were for Nora--and were very grateful again for everyone's generosity. As always, we had a lot of fun GIVING gifts this year, too, and they seemed to be well-received by everyone, so that's always a good feeling. :)

Tessa traveled with us (here she is, sporting her new collar that Santa brought for her), so we truly had our whole little family with us.

Melissa and Andy made us a wonderful Christmas dinner--lasagna rolls. Everything was delicious; in fact, Nora ate an entire lasagna roll by herself, so clearly something had been done right!

After dinner, we tried to get some nice photos of the three cousins together, just like we had done with Nora and Hunter in the morning. Unfortunately, we waited too long and Nora was too tired. This is the best we could do:

Oh well, at least we have photos for posterity. No one ever said all of the kids have to be smiling in them, right? :)

We spent the night at Melissa's and came home the following morning. It was a busy holiday for us, but one that we really enjoyed. We felt like we got to spend a lot of quality time with our families, and the kids all had a great time together.

I can't wait to see how Nora does with it all next year. It seems like it'll just keep getting better and better as she comes to understand it more.