Christmas Eve 2009

The annual Christmas Eve bash with the C's and the B's
was at our house this year.

(click here to see last year's pictures.... back when Evyn still had her
chubby, little-girl cheeks.... my how she's grown!)

Andrew did great, much better than I had hoped for. I put him to
bed by 8pm and he slept straight through the noise of the party,
which lasted until midnight!


Before the guests arrived:







Andrew opened a few gifts before going to bed:






Everyone listened intently to Emily:



Food! Cakes, cookies, fruit salad, roast beef tenderloin, pasta salad, sweet potato & crab soup, and more:




Then, the kids' favorite time - gifts:

Snow fort: day 2

After a day and a half the snow stopped falling and we started digging out. Scott and Evyn were back at their snow fort, and a neighbor girl came to check it out and play.






Andrew ventured out for about as long as it took to snap these pictures. He wasn't keen on the cold or the snow- which was fine by me, as I'd already been out most of the morning shoveling!

Evyn's snow fort

The weekend before Christmas we got about a foot of snow, much to Evyn's delight. Scott and Evyn spent many hours outside sledding, making snow angels, eating bowlfuls of snow (well, Evyn did), and building a huge snow fort. In fact, they were still out past Evyn's bedtime, finishing up the fort/cave.

Before heading out, we let Evyn open an early Christmas present - a snow block maker. Andrew loved the paper!

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I took the following pictures out our bedroom window; I liked "flipping" through them and watching the chronology:

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portraits

Earlier this month we had professional pictures* taken of the kids with their cousins, to give to grandparents, aunts, and uncles for Christmas. It is (as Paul Harvey would say), the rest of the story, from our post, Snow Firsts.







*these are pictures of pictures, not digital proofs, so please excuse the poor image quality!