Christmas Marathon

Are you ready for this. It may take an hour to read this post. Because it's time for our annual Christmas Marathon. Minus the running, of course. Here we go...

Our Christmas began a bit before Christmas when Sarah's immediate family gathered for a formal picture, meal, and brief gift opening at our home.

They love to help tear paper!

Then onto Sarah's extended family that evening. 

The spoons tournament

With more gift opening, the girls were definitely entertained. Speaking of entertainment, Miriam decided to "play" Lion King. She had her great-aunts and great-grandma crawling on the floor pretending to be jungle animals.

The next day we celebrated Mema and Pepa's 70th wedding anniversary. After a much needed nap, meal, and bath, the girls were ready to begin our little family's Christmas celebration. First, the Advent calendar...

Whoa, that bump is for real!

 ...then they opened the "Night Before Christmas" box.

It included a new set of handmade PJs for each of the girls, slippers, a book, hot chocolate, and cookies. They were thrilled and we enjoyed watching them slurp down a warm cup of hot chocolate through a straw.

 The next morning, we opened our gifts from Santa. Each of the girls got bikes!

And a few other toys.

We spent Christmas Eve with Sarah's immediate family and both of her grandmas. Huge meal, Mass, gift opening.

Left, paternal grandma, right, maternal grandma

Sarah and her sister Bridget

 The evening was chaotic, of course. But that's how we operate best.

And Stella was there...made our girls so happy!

 

Hint: this gift tag is written in Grandpa's handwriting

When we left Sarah's parents, we went on an "adventure." This is Miriam's term for driving aimlessly through new neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights. We woke up on Christmas morning and went directly to Tim's parents for the day.

The best-stuffed stockings are at Nana and Papa's.

This year they included M&M's. The girls had a pre-breakfast appetizer that was a dream come true.

Nana and Aunt Sue

Tim's Aunt Sue was in town from Colorado, so we were all grateful to be able to spend time with her and her husband.

After all this activity, the girls took a break in the afternoon to watch one of their new movies. We hope you all had a Christmas as merry as ours!