Sunday, January 3, 2010

Christmas 2009

Ok, so i'm WAY behind schedule posting about Christmas, but I'm going to try to get caught up...

Christmas was really nice...we stayed home just us for Christmas and had a really nice relaxing time. I decided that i think i like having Christmas on Friday the best...take Christmas Eve off, make it a 4 day weekend and it really seems longer. We had snow a few days before Christmas, so it wasn't snowing on Christmas day, but we still had pretty substantial snow on the ground. We took Blake out through the neighborhood in his little sled (that we found at a garage sale this summer...for $3!). He REALLY likes the snow...the funny thing is he doesn't seem to get cold. Maybe it's just that he can't 'tell' us that he is cold. Either way, he seems to like it a lot.
We made it out to The Cheesecake Factory on Christmas Eve for a family dinner together. We decided we want to work on getting some yearly traditions together for the Christmas holidays that we and the kids can look forward to each year. So, we're taking suggestions. If anyone has any that they have done with their families that has been fun, we'd love to hear about them. We have some friends that do a big seafood dinner Christmas Eve and others that open gifts that night and so on. We're just trying to pin down a few unique fun ones that we can adopt. Let us know if you have any good ones :)
Kona and Blake were in charge of opening gifts. It was pretty entertaining to watch. Kona learned a couple of years ago how to open gifts and so she taught Blake what it was all about. Didn't take long for him to catch on and pretty soon they were both tearing the presents apart. The hardest part was explaning which ones were theirs. We still wanted to open our gifts :) They had a great time. Blake's second Christmas was even better than the first. It's pretty fun to see him get excited about it. I'm sure next year will be even better!
Grammy and Grampy & Rachel Bankson came out the week after Christmas to visit and also to watch Blake for us for a week while we escaped the cold and made a trip out to Hawaii. We had a really nice time visiting with them for a little time on either end of the trip. It was a lot of fun to see them. It's nice to see family during the holidays and even though it wasn't on Christmas we still enjoyed getting to spend some time with them. I had talked with a few clients and friends the weeks leading up to Christmas and in talking about what everyone was doing for the holidays they had mentioned family coming or going to visit and most of them would make a comment about how 'well, it's the holiday's and that's just what we have to do' making it sound like it was a painful experience. I'm glad that we don't feel that way about it and always look forward to spending time with family. It's unfortunate that people see it that way i think. As a side note, we went bowling while they were here, just for fun one day, and had some of the best bowling ever. Collectively we were able to break 300 as a team of 3...i consider that pretty good :) AND, i had my best game EVER throwing 5 strikes in a row (i was in a groove) and breaking 200. Not too shabby. Makes me wonder if i need to look into the bowling club :) Not really...maybe in like 20 years.