Christmas Eve

We spend our Christmas Eve every year with Nathan's family.  This year was no different.  We all gathered for a great dinner, spend time visiting as the kids run around and play, and then settled down for some serious gift unwrapping.  The gift opening production is quite the process that involves each person/child being handed a gift and Grandpa counting 1-2-3 and then a flurry of tearing paper and squeals of delight, minutes of showing off the new clothes/toys/gifts followed by the reminder to clean up all of the paper and boxes before the whole routine can be repeated again.
This year Nathan was scheduled to work Christmas Eve day-shift and so we got dinner started with outhim and then distracted the children until he could join us a little later.

All the cousins sitting down to dinner wearing
their light-up reindeer antlers.

The first gift of the evening is always a new pair of pajamas
that must be immediately changed into and worn for the rest of the night.
Again the customary photo this year including the antlers.

I unfortunately did not get anymore photos of the evening but I will say everyone left with there arms full of reminders of how much they are loved and happy hearts.

My favorite part of the night happened when Nathan was tickling J (5 years old) and T his 2 year old brother came to his defense and repeatedly whacked Nathan with his new Rescue Bot 'Boulder' toy.  J quietly escaped and Nathan endured this beating for several minutes.  For those of you not familiar with Boulder the Rescue Bot (don't worry, I had no idea what or who it was either)  here is a picture of this hard plastic toy.  I think Nathan ended up with a bruise or two.  T is one tough kiddo.