Merry (early) Christmas!

Friday morning in California we had a pre-Christmas gift exchange!  My mom brought EVERYONE'S (that's right, all 10 kids and 8 grandkids) stockings out, and had filled them up with lots of goodies.  In my family, my parents give gifts to all kids and grandkids, the kids all give gifts to our parents, and then each couple gives gifts to one other couple (we rotate names).  We usually don't gift each other's kids, except for small things when we're together, like this year.

It almost felt like real Christmas!  There were bunches of presents and wrapping paper all over the room, and everyone enjoyed giving and receiving their gifts.

Eli wanted to try on my new shirt!

My dad, Beth, and baby Ben--

Ryan, Jeri, and Tori--

Emily, Pooch, and Noah, with Eli--

Later that afternoon we drove out to a park to have professional pictures taken of the whole family.  It was quite an ordeal with a bit of a drive, then lots of walking.  Eli was really feeling the effects of no nap right then and only wanted me to hold him.  Tori was sick and pretty sad.  Luckily we got a few okay shots, which we'll be sending out in our Christmas card!  : )

My parents with the grandkids--

David caught a good pic of Pooch and Noah--

Finally after pictures were over Eli was in a better mood and wanted to play.  The park was really cool because there were tons of really big deer everywhere!  

"I found my belly button!"

That night my dad wanted to treat all of the adults to dinner out, so Ryan and Jeri had a couple girls from church come over to baby-sit.  We debated taking Eli with us, but it was going to be a late night, and he really needed to get to bed.  We had also never left him with anyone but family before, so that made us fairly nervous.  He was happily eating pizza when we left, though, so we let him be.  Our report from the sitters was that he went to bed very easily and never cried.  Strangely the next morning when we saw him, he had a big scar down the middle of his forehead, a smaller one on his chin, and a little one by his eye.  Naturally David and I were fairly bothered and curious about what happened.  It seems the kiddos might have gotten a little too jammed while crawling through a play tunnel.  It would have been nice to hear that from the sitters instead of my 8-year-old niece.

The adults had a nice time at dinner, eating at a BBQ place called Lucille's, that even gave out free tootsie roll pops!  Score!

Later that night all of us siblings and spouses (minus David) played Scattegories together.  It was a blast, with lots of laughing and humorous, head-scratching answers.