Merry Christmas Part 1

Every year, the kids are lucky enough to get gifts from two of their very favorite great-grandparents; Nana and Grandma Mary! A few years ago, we started doing these gift openings a few days before Christmas so the kids had time to write thank you cards, call and thank personally and most importantly, enjoy their new tresures before the masses of gifts roll in. 

-On a side note, we try to keep Christmas around here more about the Advent season and Jesus. However, when you have 5 kids and each kid gets 3 presents from us, one from Uncle Jordan, a couple from Grandma, and others from grandparents/great grandparents, it all adds up to lots of stuff! This is probably the main reason we like to have them open these special great grandparent gifts early. -

First up, it was gifts from Grandma Mary. The kids decided this year, they would like to do a gift exchange for Grandma Mary's gift money. We went to Target as a family and divided into teams. It has been so long I don't remember who picked who, all I know is they did a great job being very thoughtful and trying to really think about what their sibling might like. Brandon took all the kids to the car while I checked out. We wrapped presents, made them wait a couple of days until the suspense was just too much to handle, then we did the gift exchange. All the kids were very happy and truly appreciative of their sibling for their gift. They were of course, also very thankful to Grandma Mary whos gift made this heartwarming exchange possible. 

 All the kids loved their gift, but none more then Elias who had an extremely lucky pull from his Pokemon cards. I don't even know what card he got but there was LOTS of screaming and jumping around. 

After we did the Grandma Mary gift exchange, we headed to my parents for dinner and presents. My parents,have done group gifts a few times and it really ends up being a great way to reduce the amount of stuff that comes in the house. I waffled back and forth on if we wanted to do a pool or a trampoline. In the end I decided broken bones was better then drowning so we requested a trampoline. I found a fabulous deal on one in October and the trampoline had been sitting in my parents garage since then waiting to be opened! My mom brought out the ladder to show them what they were getting.....they were all very confused and finally Annie figured it out and there was much jumping and screaming to be had by all. Now, the hard part of waiting for the snow to melt to set it up!

 THANK YOU GRAMMY AND PAPA!!!

Last up, was gifts from Nana! Can you tell we opened them on a Sunday during football season?

Anyways, the kids each got a hands on gift from Nana. Samuel got the Bee game from lakeshore learning he saw almost a year ago in a catalog and just HAD TO HAVE. Annie got a cake pop baking set, which we promptly baked and ate nom nom. Elias got a couple of new light sabers and Benjamin got really cool magnetic shapes you can build things out of. 

All the gifts were much appreciated and provided lots of entertainment!