What a Christmas!

Well we had a great Christmas. Again the kids were spoiled as ever, but I guess we were as well. We started out on Christmas Eve celebrating at my Dad's in Adams. He made the traditional oyster stew and chili (for those non-oyster eating folks) for lunch and then chow mien for supper. We watched a movie, opened gifts, and relaxed until 8pm or so.

From there we headed back to Rochester in time for Christmas mass with Dave's family. It was a beautiful mass with lots of Christmas music! We were home close to 11:30pm and decided we wanted to open gifts. Everyone was wide awake and looking forward to see what was under the tree. In addition to opening our Christmas presents, Dave's Mom and sister surprised me with a little baby shower. It was such a fun surprise! I had went to change into my pj's before opening gifts and when I returned to the living room to find baby shower decorations, a cake, and baby gifts. Apparently they had planned to surprise me with the shower at Dave's Mom's family Christmas the weekend before, but we had to cancel and reschedule due to the weather. Since they already had the cake, they didn't want to see it go to waste so they decided to surprise me with it then instead. It was so fun! We even played a couple games. The highlight was guessing the size of my belly. Dave's Dad won with an exact guess of (shhhh....a whopping 45 in). He even won a prize, which was a tape measure. We ended up staying up until close to 3am, by the time all the gifts were opened and everyone was ready to head to bed.

In the morning, the kids were up by 8:30 to see what Santa had brought them. I was surprised they were up that early given how late we went to bed. Dave's parents and sister also came over to see what the kids had gotten and brought some delicious breakfast. Before we knew it, it was time for us to leave. The kids had their bags packed for their Dad's and we were off to volunteer at the Salvation Army Christmas meal. It was such a great experience. The kids really enjoyed spending part of their Christmas giving to those less fortunate. I think it will be a new tradition at our house. As you may have noticed from my previous post...Kyle was interviewed by the TV station. He did such a great job with the interview....we were so proud of him.

From there we took the kids down to Dexter to spend the rest of Christmas Day through Saturday with their Dad, and Dave and I returned to his parents in Rochester. We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening, relaxing, watching TV/movies in front of the fireplace, playing cards and enjoying an amazing supper.....steak and lobster! It was SO good!

Friday and Saturday were spent working on projects around the house and getting our wardrobe from IKEA setup in our bedroom. Dave's parents gave us this as our Christmas present (big thanks to John and Nancy for this!). It looks amazing....now baby Ava will have her bedroom all to herself and won't have to share her closet with mommy!

Saturday evening after the wardrobe was all put together, we headed to Adams to pick up the kids from there Dad and then went to visit my Grandpa Dick and Grandma Shirley. We took down KFC chicken for supper and enjoyed visiting and seeing them for the evening.

Sunday, Dave and Kyle went to the Vikings game (which was one of Kyle's X-mas presents) and Allicia and I stayed home to continue working on projects around the house.....number one being getting baby Ava's room and closet organized, in addition to washing up her clothes, packing our bag for the hospital, etc. We are now officially ready for her whenever she decides to arrive. As we were working around the house we were also watching the amazing game on TV. Kyle and Dave had a blast a the game! To Kyle's surprise....following the game Dave's sister Jen, had arranged for Kyle and Dave to meet up with Matt Birk's(Viking Center) wife, for her to get them into the Vikings family locker room. This was the highlight of Kyle and Dave's day! They met many of the Vikings players and were even able to get their autographs. On the top of Kyle's list was Addrian Peterson! As you can imagine, Kyle was on cloud nine. I don't think he will ever forget that experience.....I'm sure it will be a day he will tell his kids about someday.

Look for another post very soon with pictures from our all of the events above!