Dad and Susie joined us Tuesday night and Kyle and Kevin joined us on Wednesday. You know what else joined us? TONS OF TREATS. I don't know about your family, but we always end up with more goodies than we know what to do with. Dad and Susie brought all of theirs and we had to set up a table just for all of the cookies, candy, and whatnot. SO MUCH FOOD.
This whole holiday was so warm; like spring time warm. Grandpa and the boys got in some football before the rain started.
So. Much. Rain this weekend. The sump pump has been running a lot.
We had our traditional Christmas Eve Eve Chinese food dinner. I thought I'd be tricky and put in an online group order at Panda Express, but they had all sorts of technical issues. So that morning I called in our order and they claimed everything was set. But of course it wasn't and Lance had to deal with all sorts of madness at the mall that night just picking the food up. It tasted all the more delicious for the extra effort, right?
Most of Christmas Eve day was spent relaxing, cooking, and, if you're a Roper boy, shopping at Wal-Mart and getting your hair cut. Josh was excited to catch Grandma Susie "sleep reading".
Christmas Eve dinner was almost a crisis - my dang oven died halfway through! The bottom element totally stopped working, and the top element would turn on but wouldn't be regulated, so would get so hot that the oven would turn itself off. Using my pioneer-ancestor-ingenuity I was still able to make dinner and it all turned out pretty well! We had lasagna, hot rolls, ham, roasted potatoes, pear/blue cheese salad, and ginger ale with cranberry ice cubes.
Dinner was fine, but Tess was A PILL afterwards. I think all of the build up excitement of the holidays and having family here just about did her in. I had serious doubts she was going to last through all of the festivities, but she pulled herself together and we were able to have a nice evening.
She wasn't too pleased looking for her hidden Christmas jammies.
But was pretty excited to open them - Christmas light jammies!
And Cole got space jammies, which he was quite excited about. "I've been WAITING for these!" What the what? Okay, glad you're happy.
I completely forgot to get pictures of each child in their jammies. Dang. But we did get our annual family portrait in front of the fireplace.
Silly poses as well.
After pictures we had a short but sweet talk about the nativity story. It lasted about 6 minutes, which was just perfect because the kids were all wound up and ready for CHRISTMAS EVE BINGO!
My dad gave me a pretty fancy bingo set for my birthday, which made it all the more exciting.
We were able to finagle the results so that everyone 12 and under was able to win early on. Josh, as per usual, was not happy with life in general when he did not IMMEDIATELY win.
Cole was in heaven. He'd been itching to play bingo for so long!!
Uncle Kevin had to wait awhile to win as well, but he was better behaved about it. (At least he doesn't pout.)
Miss Tess won the first round and then helped Grandma call out numbers.
Success! Josh finally won. And what prize did he choose? The car tissue holder. What the what?
After much excitement and fanfare (and perhaps a little melatonin for the kiddos) everyone finally got into bed. I was able to take a few pictures after Santa came. With 6 adults and 4 kids our tree looked like it had a wrapped store underneath!
I love how our family room looks on Christmas Eve night!
The kids were given strict instructions not to come out of their rooms until 6am. Dad claims he heard Josh and Cole stirring at 4:30am. I heard them out in the living room at 5:50. I waited until 6:00 to get up and join them. It took a while, but by 6:50 the whole family was up and ready to open presents.
Santa brought Josh something he'd been pining for for quite a while: Nintendo Monopoly!
Santa made Cole the happiest little boy and brought him a fancy Hot Wheels track! (SO HAPPY.)
Spencer got a pretty awesome Death Star Perplexus. It even lights up and makes noises.
Tess got a cool headband decorating kit, but refused to be pictured with it. This was the closest I could get.
I didn't get many pictures of the rest of the present opening, but I did get a few of Cole opening what he had really, really wanted: a new marble magic kit!
Seriously, SO EXCITED. He would've skipped the rest of the gifts and just played with that all morning if we had let him.
The aftermath was fairly impressive.
The rest of the day was spent lounging around, eating, eating more, playing with toys, napping, and lounging. In other words, it was an amazing day.
A very Merry Christmas indeed!
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