We’re headed home today after a wonderful time with the family!

This year was unique for so many reasons. First, we’ve never spent Christmas in LA. Truth be known, I was SUPER resistant to leave our Northwest Christmas behind. But my brother Shae and Erica invited us all to come and spend it in their new home.

ELEVEN of us flew in, and we spent the last seven days being together under one roof.

We all feel like this was the BEST Christmas ever for our family! Instead of spending JUST Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together, we stayed up for six nights and seven days playing games, watching movies, going shopping and swimming during the day, cooking up feasts, and eating lots of cake! Their was a rich mixture of laughs until you thought you would wet your parents, expected family tiffs from being in close quarters for seven days :), and a few good cries here and there. Wouldn’t have changed a thing…

Here’s a little photo album with some fun stories in between, and a question for you at the end!

Erica, having grown up in Tennessee, remembers leaving a slice of Red Velvet Cake out for Santa Claus instead of milk and cookies. Talk about cake that puts you flat on the couch because it’s so good and rich!

Every year we draw names for Christmas, and my youngest brother and Brian both got each other’s names. Shauni decided to get Brian one of those cool little remote control helicopters, you can guess what happened for the rest of the afternoon. 🙂

And then Shae had to get in on the fun too! That is totally the face Shae would have when he was a kid! Hilarious!! So focused!

I have to say that Blaze was the most thoughtful shopper this year! He picked out a hand mirror for his big sissy, and the crazy thing is Pascaline had been asking for this exact mirror one hour prior with me. Sissy was so excited!

When I asked Blaze what we should get for each other for Christmas, without even thinking, he looked up at me and said, “Mama, you need new tea set.” I almost died. When he gave me the little bird tea cup and saucer he found, he was so excited. I’ve got a pretty sweet boy (and it must be noted that dad won a few points for remembering to help Blaze find mama a teacup :)) .

My mom and I couldn’t resist after the family photo was taken. The Christmas balls were just to fun to not play with. 🙂

While my dad slaved away on the turkey!

And Shae let the marshmallows on top of the yams catch fire. 🙂 Whoops!

And the kids were SUPER patient to open the rest of the presents!

Putting up with the dozens of photos that everyone wants in front of the tree. Remember those days?

And I can’t leave out the eleven stockings hanging. That was pretty cute!

Erica decorated the tree and house with a classic Nutcracker theme, and it turned out so beautiful and fun!

So if we had awards throughout the day…

Best Costume would have to be BATMAN (yes, Spiderman and Superman are a thing of the past, Batman is every thing now).

Check this out, I was taking the shot and didn’t even realize he was throwing a bat at me! 🙂 This guy is serious!

Cutest Couple would have to be my grandparents, hands down.

Best Memory…this photo. This totally sends me back to the three of us being kids, and my youngest brother saying “What are you doing?” with that sassy type of tone and look. And, Shae always having that cool demeanor about him that says “whatever”. 🙂

Best Present of ALL! My grandpa’s new calculator that my grandma got for him. Does it get any sweeter than this! He said, “I just need those buttons bigger these days.” (I love you Grandpa Don)

That in a nutshell was our Christmas 2007! My question for you is what was your favorite memory or story from your Christmas?

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Quick notes…

1. Now that I’ve finished this blog, I realize that my quick action for borders had a flaw so that you’re only seeing one side of the black border on the horizontal images. And you know what, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to let it go and catch this flight! Rather than redo them. 🙂 Brian is proud…he knows my perfectionist ways. 🙂

2. Brian and I had so much fun conspiring with a couple more husbands on surprising their wives with spots in our upcoming workshops. You husbands rock! You must email and tell us what your wives said!

3.  It looks like 98% of the DVDs ordered for Christmas gifts made it! Can I just say we were SUPER excited about this! We now have an incredible shipping/distributor that we’ve started working with and coming to LA could have been this stressful thing, but the shipping company did things with great success! The 2% that didn’t make it in time is still a BIG deal to us. We plan to look into things when we’re back in the studio this week. Thanks for your patience!!

5. We have some BIG things underway for new year and can’t wait to start spilling the beans on the blog as the new year starts to roll in! Stay tuned friends because a lot of it has to do with all of you!

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