Stuffed & Tired!

Hi everyone, Nikki here today!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday weekend! We sure did!  Five family Christmas gatherings plus five Christmas dinners equal EXHAUSTION!  I love both our families a lot but with having both sets of parents divorced can be hard around the holidays.  However we love them all and wouldn’t want to miss time with any of them.  I was able to separate all the gatherings into to 4 days so that was nice.  I’m very fortunate to have such loving families that I can’t complain too much.

For today’s blog post really I’m going to do it through pictures, actually a lot of pictures (5 Christmas’ remember) however I’ve narrowed them down pretty well… I think! 

We started the week of Christmas off at Hulston Cancer Center.

Bella & I visiting the patients; here is Bella in her Christmas dress at Hulston…

  

Then Wednesday night we had Christmas with Dan’s father, Jim.

(Okay so I didn't get any pictures from this night, my camera battery died, so this pic is actually from Thanksgiving, but I couldn't leave him out.) 

We had Christmas Eve dinner with my dad’s side of the family at my sister Emily’s home.

Which was so fun with, especially because the twins, who will be 2 in a couple of months so their favorite part was the wrapping paper!

The dessert bar...

Sweet Ellie...

Mollie and her babies...

The twins...

"Tank" (Max)

And Cade with his new house-shoes.

 

I know this is going to seem like an odd picture, Bella with a frozen turkey?? Well because Bella is a Pet Therapy dog with one of the local hospitals she gets a turkey for her work as a volunteer.  All the volunteers get free turkeys for Christmas, so this is Bella with her Christmas turkey! Thanks Bella! (And yes she got some bites of her turkey.)

Christmas Day was with just Dan, Henry and I…

(In our Christmas PJ's!)

Dan got new running shoes from Santa!

As most of you know I love, love, love Starburst Jelly Beans... 

which of course Santa knew!

But the best gift under the tree was from my sweet hubby, Dan...

a Canon Rebel T2i!! (You'll see from here on out the pictures get much better.)

Henry and I

 

Christmas dinner was with my mom’s side of the family…

 My new nephew, Jacob!

My brother Ryan and Henry.

My brother Ryan and his wife, Tessa, gave my parents a blue framed 

ultrasound picture of their baby boy! The surprise was that none of us knew what the baby was going to be, we thought they weren't going to find out until after the new year! 

Such a wonderful gift, a baby boy!

Aunt Nikki with both Jacob & Alex.

Once we were back home again we posed for our annual Christmas PJ picture! 

This is not an easy task as we are out numbered by the 4 legged babies!

My Nico & I on his first Christmas with us!

I sure love that dog!

Our last and final Christmas… was with Dan’s mom and brother, Jamie; which was Sunday night.

Jamie and his kids, Ashley, Ronnie and Andy.

We always take the "before" pictures but rarely do we take any of the aftermath; 

(since I was looking for an excuse to take pictures) here is the

end result of Sunday night's last and final Christmas dinner!

I have just one last picture to share… its of my boy, Nico! (Shocker) This was his first Christmas with us and I think it was a bit overwhelming for him! Tons of visitors, lots of treats and so many dog toys that we had to put most of them up! The funny thing is he loves his toys, he doesn’t tear them up to shreds, instead he licks them and lays on them. He’s so stinking sweet!

Thanks for allowing me to share my share my wonderful holiday week with all of you!

I’ll be back later this week! -Nikki