Hard to Believe..

I know - I have posted twice in one week. Nope, I'm not sick - just actually have had some time. I can't believe another Christmas has come and gone! When we were younger, it took forever for Christmas to come. It would take even longer, if we knew our relatives were coming to Wall to spend it with us too. We would spend every Christmas Eve eating Grandma's chilli before the church service. After the program was over and we got our brown paper sack full of peanuts, M&Ms, Candy canes, and gum from the church, we'd head to our house to open presents. Grandma would always throw a fit over the presents we got her - but they must have always been good because they would bring tears to her eyes. She always wanted to get home and go to bed so she would hurry us along with the present opening.
Then we would go to bed and open Santa presents the next day. Grandma would always shake her head that Santa would leave her a present at our house. We would ususally have a Christmas Dinner complete with turkey, cheeseball, cheese dip, potatoes, and Grandma's carrot cake.
Now as we get older, the traditions definately get lost in the busyness. I don't think it's that they aren't as important anymore - everyone just does their own thing.
This year, I feel very lucky as all of my immediate family was together on Christmas. I know that this doesn't always happen so we have to treasure it when it does happen. It wasn't suppose to happen that everyone was together on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - but a snowstorm happened and the Interstates were closed - so there was no other choice.
Gary and Sommerlyn and the girls came up to mom and dads for Christmas. We ended up opening presents that afternoon. It was so fun to watch Malaya with opening the presents. Kids definately make Christmas! Then they all went to church and when they got home we ate supper. I even made a carrot cake pan in Grandma's pan - which I burned the cake in. I just shook my head and thought next time I will make it like grandmas. When we were leaving, Malaya told us we had to be quiet because Santa could be outside. Mike and I went over to his parents house after that. We wanted to go to the 10:30 PM church service that night. Mike's mom had made scrapbooks for all the kids. It was neat to look and see pictures of Mike when he was as kid!
Christmas morning we went back to mom and dad's for Santa Presents. Malaya waited so patiently for us to get there. We opened Santa presents and had a wonderful turkey dinner. We decided to go to his sisters house when the girls were napping so we wouldn't keep them up. We played 3 games of Farkle with them. It was a lot of fun!
It started snowing that afternoon pretty bad, so we went back to mom and dads for supper and then came home. The area we live doesn't get plowed too good and we wanted to make sure we could get in.
We woke up to huge drifts this morning and more snow falling down. I think the whole state is snowed in! We are very fortunuate that everyone was here for Christmas and none of us were stranded by ourselves somewhere. We did go out and snowblow some and even drove into town tonight. We have been going nuts being in the house all day!
Christmas worked out good as we still were able to see most of Mike's family too. The only one we didn't see is one of his brothers and his family. We definately count our blessings with having most of the immediate family living here.
I included a video of Mike jumping off the deck. The drifts were past our waists and Mike needed to get the snowblower out of the shed. I told him that it would be way easier to just jump off the deck then to tromple through the snow. After he did it, he decided that was a dumb idea. The snow pictures don't make it seem like we have a lot - but trust me we do.
I have also put a few pictures on here. I didn't take a lot at Christmas - but did take a few. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas spending time with family.