Christmas Is The Time To Come Together.............

as sung in The Peace Carol - "a time to put all differences aside - and I reach out my hand - to the family of man - to share the joy I feel at Christmas time."

 

Smelling Jessi's homemade cinnamon rolls baking must mean it's Christmas morning!!  After Jaime's and Jill's arrived (and even Robby who drove down from Ft Collins that morning) we had our first breakfast of cinnamon rolls, fruit and dip and coffee!!

 

And thanks to Jessi, she lined us all up BEFORE we opened gifts to get some pictures!!

 

 And then the present opening began!!  I had all the kids sit down in front of the tree so I could hand out cute little elf booties filled with goodies!!

 The kids had a ball opening their gifts - and they TRIED to all sit in the Christmas Chair at one time but only 4 would fit!!

 Evan and Kenzie love to help their mom in the kitchen so the aprons and chefs hats will be put to good use!

 Aleah still wasn't feeling very good but she mustered up a smile here!!

 In between present opening we had our 2nd breakfast - crock pot egg bake and sausage casserole with cinnamon toast - yummy!!!

I made all of the kids Snapfish books - I always take a lot of pictures of them during the year of all of the holidays and outings so it's easy to put together their own individual books and they always love them!

 Rayna requested volleyball posters for her walls - so I had to include a poster of HER!!

 Kylan's gift was probably the most "used" gift of the day - a remote control helicopter that the kids really had fun with!!

 I also had cute "street signs" made up with their names!!

The girls did their gift exchange in the afternoon which is always fun but it's even more fun to watch the guys do theirs!!  They take it SO seriously to make sure they get the RIGHT gift and it's funny to watch them!

Gary took some of the kids to the park to play in the afternoon - Jessi and I went for a walk - 3 of the guys watched football - and Parker actually took a nap!!

Prime rib dinner with all the fixings came about 4:00 and it was all delicious!!  While we were at the table, we did our predictions!  It came right down to the last question to see who would win between Gary and Jessi and Glenn and I - but HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY - the frog is ours for the next year!!  WOW - it's ONLY the 2nd time we've won it so I was pretty excited!!!  Jill DID forget to bring him down so he hasn't taken up residence in our house yet but we'll get him soon!!

Robby headed home with Aleah and Parker that evening so the sick ones could get better and Jill stayed  -  her and Jaime went back to their house to watch The Hunger Games.  At the Keppy residence, we watched The Sound of Music - ah, I love that show!!

FINALLY Sunday morning Jessi and I got to do coffee before church!!  Glenn and Brad went ice fishing again but were back in time to watch kids so us 4 girls could go see Catching Fire - it was the second time for Jessi and I but Jill and Jaime hadn't seen it - Rayna came too so it was an all girls' outing!!

And after loading up the car, it was finally time to head home after a wonderful Christmas holiday!!