Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you out there. We here at the Kelly house had a lovely Christmas. We are crashing hard today, but the last two days were just super. Christmas Eve we hosted the Spindler crowd. This follows a long tradition that my Grandparents had started in this house.

This year we added a fun Gingerbread House Decorating Contest. It was guys vs. gals and my parents and my cousin, Sarah, acted as judges. This pic is from the guys side and clearly was blatant attempt to win the judges favor with their names(Fran and Bill) on the roof. Not to be fooled by such cheap ploys for favoritism, the judges correctly voted on the superior house(that one of course belonging to the girls and yours truly). It was really fun and added a little camaraderie to the evening.

Wayne made a super gift for my brothers' boys. I forgot to get a pic of it since I was busy catching their reaction on video and that of Kurt and Christina's. Surprisingly, their reaction was signifiacantly different from the kids. Wayne made them a potato gun. If you haven't seen one in action it's a PVC tube concoction that can fire a potato 200 yards. I can't imagine why Kurt and Tia were not so excited by this but the boys really seemed to love it:)

Christmas Day, after much excitement and coffee in the early am hours, we had brunch with my immediate family at our place again. Wayne gave me a new external flash for my camera and I cannot tell you how much I am LOVING it! Such a difference in the photos, I'm sure you will agree. Then it was off to the Wayne's brothers' house for the Kelly Christmas. They have so many in the family it makes for such a wonderful gathering. Every adult brings one gift up to a $20 value and then we choose #'s and you can either pick a wrapped present from the pile or steal a gift from someone else. A gift can only be stolen 3 times before it's "dead." It makes for a fun little time.

After their house it was out to Hilton with the Spindlers again. I would post pics but it appears my computer has now run out of space for my large files. This is something Wayne has been warning me about now with dire predictions of not being able to put my pics up and it has now happened. So if anyone has any suggestions on an external hard drive, now would be the time to pass them along:)

It was a lovely Christmas. The kids, although extremely tired, did remarkably well. We are taking it easy today and tomorrow to give their little bodies time to rest. Merry Christmas everyone.