boxing day 2013 and beyond

We were all pretty tired...

We stayed in jammies most of the day, but managed to get the house clean enough to have my family over that night.  The boys also found some time to play in the leaves that Angie raked up for us.  Yes, we get fall in December here. 

The boys were happy to pose with all their loot for the sake of posterity..

Nora's loot was unjustly smaller, but she didn't mind.

 We all know she just wanted to eat the wrapping...

 Jimmy was probably most excited for Finn to come over so he could show off all his stuff and have a battle with the castles.

 We had our feast, but since we had a smaller crowd than usual we opted for lots more leftovers this year and a lot less cooking.  

 We still did poppers and all got our crowns...

 We got a Taber family picture...

 Wait.  Zoom out.  Who else was sneaking in there?  Dot and Gus and, of course, Gus' sword.

 Since Aunt Nat didn't get in until after Christmas we took that as a good excuse to make our Gingerbread house late.  Since we celebrate the Christmas season for 12 days I had no problem with this and perhaps even want to make it a tradition to ease the stress of getting it done during Advent.

Things got crazy. There might have been some tears over where certain candy got placed, but they were proud of the finished product.

 We got some time to try out our bikes and see if I remembered how.

Nano and Nana's present came late, but I always like a good late present.

Jimmy was overjoyed since he thought he wasn't getting anything else and the gift was a basketball hoop.

 Everyone has been practicing.

We were so lucky to have three Weisse Aunties visit during the Holidays.

We love them all and they are so helpful.

 Jimmy originally said the castle was his favorite present, then the basketball hoop seemed to trump that, but at school he wrote down that his favorite present was a chess set that that also has checkers, backgammon, chinese checkers, parcheesi, tic-tac-toe, and dominoes.  This was his present from Mom and Dad and I am happy it is being appreciated.  Jimmy has been teaching Gus chess and I think they both remember the rules better than me.  It is so funny to watch them play.

Well, it is really all a blur so hopefully I made sense in writing these last few posts. I  am glad we have pictures so I can remember this time in my life as being happy and lovely instead of kind of exhausting and miserable.