boxing day and post-christmas 2012

The day after Christmas is always fun because you get to get up and really have time to play with all your new things.  I love taking pictures of my boys with their gifts because I always loved looking back at those Christmas pictures of myself.  I loved remembering what I got each year.  So far Jimmy is the same as me in that department (along with a lot of other good and bad departments).  However, it is difficult to get the boys to let me keep all their things set-up together at one time since they usually want to be playing with at least one new item.  Believe me the toys didn't look this way for long.  

We celebrate the day after Christmas known as Boxing Day.  (see previous Boxing Days for more details).  Mostly, it comes down to being too busy on Christmas to make a big traditional meal so we procrastinate. We had the dinner at my house again this year.  The boys love when everyone comes over and they get to show off their presents. 

The big box of Playmobil castle was attacked and enjoyed by everyone in the boy's room.

 Dot Burch and Blaise Kersting helped fill the cute baby quota.

And in his usual tradition, Uncle Pete made up a crazy game for us all to enjoy.

This "Wheel of Destiny" was also used at the Burch family party.  It basically is a white elephant style game that involves stealing gifts based on different types of mental and physical challenges.  For example the two grandpa's had to duke it out for a Lego Mini figure by holding books above their heads and seeing who could name more Christmas characters.  It was quite entertaining and certainly the best gift exchange I have ever taken part in.  The real highlight of the night was when I beat Pete.  He was allowed to come up with any trivia question about a Christmas movie that I had seen.  First, he picked Die Hard (so I cursed my husband for making me watch it the year before).  Then he picked something about football since he knows sports is my weakness in trivia.  I figured it was hopeless at that point.  His question was this:  "What football game is the security guard watching at the beginning of the movie Die Hard?"  I very randomly threw out Notre Dame vs. USC.  Needless, to say he stared blankly at me for a minute and told me I was right.  I might have jumped up and down streaming in joy for a bit.  Really nobody in the room could believe what had just happened.  Pete then cursed himself for not picking something so completely off the wall that I couldn't have even tried to guess it.  I wasn't even excited about getting to keep my present that he was trying to steal.  The thrill of beating Pete is better than any gift I could have opened.  

I didn't get many pictures of the antics because I took video instead, but hopefully, you get the idea.

 We had enough of our traditional poppers for the kids and we had some homemade crowns as well, so we still managed to get our traditional colorful crown pictures. First up, the Burches:

 Tabers (and a Dot):

 Kerstings:

 Weisses:

The rest of the days after Christmas went pretty fast so we had to enjoy every minute we had with the family before they had to leave.  Gus had lots of aunts to get cozy on in the mornings.

 Aunt Erin (the castle expert of the family) came over to help us build an even bigger castle:

 We went to the park to test out all the new planes and helicopter.

We were sad when everyone had to leave.  Uncle Danny got to hang out for awhile and Aunt Angie came back for a few days after New Year's, so we got to go with them on a Zoo Lights adventure.

Then the next week or so we just hung out with our tree until it was becoming a fire hazard.
The boys still love the train Baabee gave them last year and are always sad to see it go back in the boxes with the decorations, so they got in as much playtime as possible.  

 The night before we took our tree down (a few nights after the Epiphany, I think) I decided to let the boys have one last night of enjoying it, so we made a big cozy spot of blankets and pillows in front of the fire place.  We drank hot cocoa and ate pieces of the Gingerbread house.  We read Christmas books and listened to our Christmas records one last time.

 It was a nice way to end the season.  The boys loved it and were happy to help me dismantle the tree the next day.... okay, scratch that, only Jimmy was happy to help.  Gus tried putting things back on the tree and cried a bit when the tree went outside.

 It is always sad to see it all end, but I really had a wonderful Christmas time this year and look forward to many more still to come with my wonderful little family.