Christmas Day

Like usual, our first stop on Christmas is my Nana’s for breakfast. Our family has grown and this year with all of us, there was 20 people. This is a smaller version of our Christmas Eve with Memaw. Each of Memaw’s daughters do this with their immediate family on Christmas morning.

It’s funny because when we go into the living room to open presents, it’s like we have assigned seats, everyone sits in their same spots, year after year. Our family has obviously outgrown “our” couch, but we refuse to do anything different-haha!

Adam got a tool chest, can you believe this man has been married into an Ace Hardware family for going on 8 years and it wasn’t until this Christmas that he received an Ace tool chest?!

Ava received a music player with a microphone and has been singing away ever since. We loaded it with songs that she loves and she will dance and sing into the microphone, so cute! She also got some books and a movie and Tinkerbell get-well kit!

The one toy she asked for repeatedly since the first time she saw it was a Mickey Mouse Choo-Choo. She told Nana she wanted it and I have to say, she might have been more excited about this gift than anything else she got. We opened it right away and I believe it now has a permanent home in our living room, it is played with everyday.

I know you probably don’t know this, but we are HUGE Jaguar fans- haha Surprise right? Well, Ava’s first Christmas, my dear cousin bought Ava some Dallas Cowboys socks and it has been an ongoing joke between us. This year, after Brian came to a Jaguar game and said he didn’t have a Jaguar shirt, Ava KNEW what she wanted to get him for Christmas, so guess what this Dallas fan now owns? Yep! A Jaguar shirt :)

Ava and Raeleigh are best buds when they get together. They both had to check on each other’s gifts and make sure they were okay with what they got-haha! Ava wanted to show Raeleigh how to use her new toys, these 2 are such a mess! So, funny story...We are all sitting in the living room, most, if not all of the presents have been opened, and all of the sudden, Stacey asks where Raeleigh and Ava are....haha! No one had even realized they were gone!!! I was closest to the back rooms so I jumped up to look and didn't see them at first glance in the family room, so I happened to see a reflection out of the corner of my eye in Nana's dressing room...ya'll they were in her dressing room on the phone!!! Lol! I stepped in there and they both looked at me and knew they had been caught! haha! It was so cute and funny!

We tried again to get pictures of the girls with their reindeer, but after about a dozen pictures we gave up, there was just too much going on, too much to see and do!

After leaving Nana’s, we rode Ava around in the car for about 45 minutes to let her sleep, otherwise she wouldn’t have another chance until bedtime. Then we headed to Adam’s parents’ house to spend a couple hours with them. Ava opened a few more gifts and had a good time visiting with everyone.

This girl loves her sunglasses, such a little diva!

After we left Adam’s family, we headed back to our house, we decided to change the location of my Mom’s side of the family from her house to our house. Ava is the only little one, and being gone all day is hard, so we decided to have everyone over to our house so she could enjoy playing with her new toys.

Aunt RoRo and Meggie brought in this huge gift, they had to use 2 different kinds of wrapping paper- haha! They ran out of one while wrapping it and had to use another one- leave it to Meggie ;)

Ava was excited to unwrap it when it was finally time to open presents. We let her open this one first. Under the wrapping paper was the biggest baby bed you have ever seen.

Ava kept trying to crawl inside, I guess she just couldn’t believe a bed this big was for her baby dolls and not her! It’s great because it has wheels and she can move it around the house really easy.

Adam’s gift from Aunt Robin and Meghan came in a pink bag this year! Only because I had told her I wanted a gift card to VS and Adam was agreeing that was what I wanted ;0 so she decided to make a bigger joke out of it.

Inside the bag was another wrapped gift :)

Ava also received a cute tutu and headband, she wanted to put it on right away and twirl around for everyone, and she did just that, she always says she is dancing like Cinderella when she dances :)

I was pleasantly surprised again this year by Aunt Ann with another signed copy of a Nicholas Sparks book.

My Aunt out did herself this year and whenever she bought a gift card for anyone she would but them in a takeout bag or box- so funny watching to see what everyone got!

Ava is princess crazy and loves the part of Cinderella where she is transformed by the fairy godmother (which Ava affectionately calls- boppity-boo) so this gift was just perfect!

One tradition we do with my mom’s family is the money drop, well, last year Ava was too young to participate, but this year I was determined she could do it and I had fully planned to bow out and help her, but they insisted I continue this year because she wouldn’t fully understand, it would be more like practice for next year. She did amazingly well and picked up a little over $6, which was much better than I expected :)

After everyone left and I cleaned up we were exhausted and had a wonderful day, full of lots of laughs and gifts. We had one very tired little girl when it was all said and done. We didn’t have church the next morning, but we did have a Jaguar game that afternoon, so it was nice that we didn’t have to get up early and hit the ground running! Christmas is always a holiday I don’t feel like we enjoy the way I would like to enjoy it, because we are so busy! We are blessed to have so much family, but it’s very tiring.