Christmas with my family!

We celebrated an early Christmas with my side of the family on the 13th. The kids got way, way, way too much from Grandma and Grandpa as they always do. This year was a bit of an improvement though, seeing as we did fit in the car to come home, unlike last year.

Instead of a huge meal we opted to do a big breakfast and it was a hit! Here is the whole gang before eating (minus me, as I was taking the pic).


Here are mom's 3 kids and our six kids...


Here are a few pics of the six kidlets opening their load.

and the big surprise gift of this year was mom's Kitchenaid, poor Mike had to haul himself and kids to the Marshall, IL Walmart on Black Friday and deal with some crazed line cutting lady to get this for mom. We all chipped in and she was super excited. She has been volunteering at a local food bank/kitchen and has been a baking fool making cakes, cookies, pumpkin bars and brownies every week, so the new Kitchenaid will come in handy.

I have had mine for a couple years and I love it still, heck I even did a scrapbook layout dedicated to my beautiful mixer. Hopefully, mom will love her's as much as I do mine.