Christmas Eve

I would love to tell you all that I took the time to straighten my hair on Christmas Eve morn, but that would be a lie. It would also be a lie to tell you that I took a shower the night before or that morning. VACATION, INTERNET. Christmas vacation is all about taking a break from personal hygiene. #readthebible

Given that philosophy, you can imagine how stoked I was when I met longtime blog reader Bobbi for the first time that day! Sweet Bobbi and her husband Wayne brought over a fried turkey that was curl-your-toes delicious so that Debbie wouldn't have to cook a main dish that day. (Debbie cooked like Paula Deen possessed all week.)

Amelia wouldn't let Bobbi hold her, but she did make plenty of "I'm unimpressed by you" faces. So, win-win.

After we scared Bobbi and Wayne away with our bland facial expressions, we ate that turkey and various other treats until we were stuffed full.

And then people laid around in various states of stupor.

It's a crying shame that my children refuse to make themselves feel right at home in someone else's house.

It's possible they get it from their "G-daddy."

Or their daddy.

And they're apparently passing it along to their new cousin G.

(Have I mentioned how hard it is to get cute pictures of Baby G without showing his face? Pretty hard. I had to get pretty creative at times.)

Even if you've got as many kids in the house as we did, there are moments of relative quiet. Not PEACE, because we had a crawler to chase around, but quiet emerged here and there for brief visits.

Sometime after lunch Jonah and Amelia were playing in the kids' bedroom and we heard him ask, "You want some TEA, Uh-mill-ee-uh?"

How could she say no?

Here's a really boring picture but one that I will really treasure. Because Debbie and Gerry are usually busy serving everyone (well, truthfully, Debbie is usually busy cooking and serving, and Gerry is usually busy cleaning up and mentally counting how many garbage bags he's already toted outside), I almost always end up without a picture of them.

This year, I took a split-second, asked them to stop near the tree, and snapped this one before they could dash off to their next chore.

And I also made a point to take a family picture of Matt, Patrice and the boys that I could use without blurring anyone's face or throwing a towel over anyone's head.

Of course, the quiet times had to end sometime, and on Christmas Eve, I suppose one of those times was when we found Will and Jake throwing the soccer ball to each other in the kids' room.

The body language on both of them just slays me on this one.

Hard to catch it if you don't even have your arms in the air, Jake.

Not too long after that game ended, they all ended back in that room playing a huge game of MarioKart on the DSes. (Cracks me up when a couple of them are tethered to outlets and have basically no range of motion.) (It's the little pleasures in life, Internet.)

The last event of the evening was the reading of a Christmas storybook by Kim.

SOME listeners were more engaged ...

... than others.

After the story time, we wrangled the kids together and got the traditional picture of them all in front of the tree together.

In 15 years, these will be worth gold to them. They're already gold to me.