Christmas Celebrations

So, the Allee's have WAY to many Christmas celebrations to do a post for each one, so I decided to outline our holiday celebrations and include one picture from the day. I will then add a Smilebox presentation with lots of pictures from all of the family, food, presents, and fun!

We kicked off the holiday celebrations with the Ives' at Uncle Troy and Aunt Debbie's house in Sedalia on Saturday, December 20th. Josh, Braden and I were the first to arrive, and I am pretty sure that Dad, Julie, Brett and Dallas were the last to arrive :) - with the exception of Uncle Troy, but he doesn't count since he was out working. It was decided to go easy and no one have to prepare a big meal, so we ordered pizza and just hung out, drank a little wine, a little bit of some frozen amaretto sour, and had dessert - which means Julie's (my stepmom) awesome pecan bars - NO ONE makes them like she does ;) We exchanged presents and enjoyed the company of family we don't get to visit with very often.

Dad, Uncle Doug, Kaleb & Stephen deep in conversation

Next it was x-mas at Grandpa Jack's in Lee's Summit on Christmas Eve evening. We always seem to snack out at Grandpa Jack's house...Nancy makes lots of goodies for us to eat. It seems like I graze all night long there :) It is nice doing the Christmas celebration at his house, this is the only holiday celebration that my family doesn't have to travel far to spend an evening with family, and then we only have to drive 10 minutes to get home when the night is done :) We all laughed and ate and had a great time - and the presents were awesome too, cannot have a holiday without someone unwrapping a present. At one point I thought that mom and Grandpa Jack were going to start wrestling in the snow over a lemon pound cake that Nancy's secretary made -ha!

Uncle Jackie with the kiddos before the present unveiling :)

When we returned home after Grandpa Jack's xmas celebration, Braden headed straight to bed without any arguments at all - he was ready for Santa to visit our house ;) Mom and John came over to our house this year Christmas Eve and stayed all night at our home so that they could see him get up Christmas morning and open his presents from us and from Santa. It was awesome having them there with us to share in the experience of Christmas morning with our son. I have dedicated a post of its own to Braden opening presents Christmas morning, so no pics for this one.

We had to be at Granny's house in Sedalia for Christmas at noon. Granny's is always AWESOME to go to, because she does the traditional - dare I say "old fashioned" (HA!) Christmas dinner - sorry Granny, I couldn't resist :) My all time favorite thing for Granny to make is her scalloped potatoes, but I don't think there is anything she makes that isn't just out of this world! Plus Granny made sure that I had plenty of black olives to snack on for this family holiday celebration - she was lacking in that department on Thanksgiving ;) Presents are pure mayhem at Granny's house - it is the most awesome sight to see! Lots of memorable things happened this Christmas...one is funny and one is sweet. This year, Nick & Tara, Stephanie, and Josh and I went in to get Granny her a new shower for her bathroom. It was pretty tough to wrap the whole shower, so Stephanie wrapped up several tubes of white caulk and gave it to her as a present to open from all of us...when she opened it someone in the crowd, while Granny was trying to figure out what she was going to do with all of this caulk said "aaaaahhhhh, Granny got caulk for Christmas" - everyone busted out laughing - so hilarious! The sweet moment was, my mom approached all of the family members a few weeks ago regarding doing a "gratuity box" for Granny. Everyone wrote a card to her telling her why she is so special to us, and what we love her for and why we are thankful to have her in our family. As a surprise to my Aunt Jenein and Uncle Steve we did one for them as well. We presented them with their boxes with all of the cards and we read them outloud - resulting in LOTS of tears - all good tears though. We are very lucky to have each of them in our lives!

Granny and her caulk - hehehehe, it still makes me laugh!!!

From there we went to the Walker's to have a Christmas celebration. We ate a great meal prepared by Aunt Velma and George, grilled chicken and bbq ribs. Everyone dug in and ate until they were stuffed. Josh and I were really stuffed because that was our second HUGE meal of the day. Braden had had such a big day by then, that he went into the extra bedroom at Grandmother and Granddaddy's house and went to sleep. He slept for pretty much the entire holiday celebration at the Walker's house. He just played way to hard at all of the other xmas gatherings :) He woke up just in time to give Grandma Paula her present from him he picked out from Hallmark. We had a packed house, but we like it that way, lots of people to love and celebrate at a time like the holidays! We headed home from the Walker's so that we could sleep in our own beds one last time before the weekend celebrations began

Everyone doing their own thing - and Josh in front of the computer!

Friday Braden and I got to hang out at home and run errands while Josh went into work. It was really nice to just chill out at home and Braden play with all of his toys before we were off to the next holiday family gathering. We celebrated with the Allee family Friday evening, we arrived at about a quarter 'til 7 p.m. - we were a little late, but in they were kind enough to wait for us to start dinner. Aunt Cindi and Uncle David are here from Florida visiting for the holidays, which is really nice since we don't get to see them very often. Jana was here this year as well since she is back in Missouri, it was great having her around for the holidays! She helped Braden put together a couple of the presents he received. Which by the way, was WAY to many - he is such a brat HA!!! We also wanted a recent family picture, so we gathered in the living room to take a good picture of the bunch! Braden's attention span only went so far with the multiple pictures taken, and started making faces into the camera, so we decided to have one final picture taken with everyone acting silly - so naturally, that is the picture that made the post!

What a crew!

From there we went to Jefferson City, I think we arrived there a little after midnight Friday night - or Saturday morning, whichever way you look at it :) I wanted to make sure that I woke up at mom's house so that if she needed any help getting ready for her Christmas celebration at her house on Saturday with us kids then I wanted to be there to help her out as much as I could. She pretty much had it all under control, but I was there just in case :) Aunt Jenein and Granny came up to share in the celebration, this is the first year they have been able to come and participate in Mom's holiday with her kids since generally it falls on Christmas Eve or during a time that another celebration is going on. It was awesome having them there with us and celebrating in mom and John's new house. Plenty of room for all of that wrapping paper ripping and kids bouncing off the walls with excitement of the gifts - actually I think that Jodi was just as excited over her vaccum - ha! We all got awesome presents from mom and John, and we had even better food (homemade fried chicken) and company for the evening!

The kiddos getting waiting to open presents

Sunday we wrapped up the weekend celebration with the Stokes' at their house. Josh and Jim spent most of their time driving back and forth to Daisy Delight - they got our order wrong - but the kids got to play and open their presents. I didn't have my camera for that one for some reason, but we had lots of fun sitting around in a calm atmosphere enjoying company of friends :) We have one last holiday celebration to do which is with the Ham's, and that will have to wait until Braden gets back home from staying the week at Uncle Quintin and Aunt Jodi's house. So much family and friends to celebrate the holiday season with!