Holiday fun – Round 6: Christmas Day with well, a housefull!

Christmas morning met us with Santa’s arrival and starting with stockings and Santa gifts downstairs. 

Chase asked Santa for a Spiderman mask and web shooter. This is the web shooter.

Here is Jack posing in the Spiderman mask

The triplets all got puzzles from Santa focusing on a different skill. This is ABCs - Graham

Anthony - focus on shapes

Jack - focus on colors

Then the crew arrived! My mom, Mom-mom, Pop-pop, Uncle Matt, Aunt Jen, Bise and Meredith joined Nana at our house for the festivities. Yes, that was 8 adults and 6 kids in one space on Christmas morning and it was…..GLORIOUS! We had such a good time celebrating that I will let the pictures do most of the talking on this one.

Release the hounds!

And more hounds released!

Anthony showing off Chase's game for his Leap Pad

Dancing Mickey - BIG hit

 

Dancing with Mickey

Enjoying our gifts with our cousins

Each triplet got their own drawing board like this

One of the card games that Chase got - he was SOOOO excited about this!

Graham

The triplets each got a backpack....again, there is a reason to be announced soon, promise!

Keeping with the Mickey theme...each grandkid got a Mickey ornament from Grandma. Jack had a fit and screamed when I tried to put his on the tree! It was too funny.

After presents we ate a traditional Christmas morning brunch at our house – the one Matt and I grew up enjoying with ‘family’ in Savannah. You see, when your Mom is an only child and your Dad’s only sibling lives on the opposite Coast, you tend to collect ‘family’ in other ways. While we love our blood family like none other, we always became the collectors of ‘family’ in other ways. Christmas morning was celebrated in our house with family friends joining us after Mass along with Father O’Brien for brunch and good times. Although life has changed in so many ways, some good, some not, it is nice to have that part of the tradition to hold on to. I think it helps me still feel like my Dad is ‘there’ on Christmas and it is nice to know that isn’t going to change for me.

After the fun and food, everyone went home for a round of naps before we all gathered at Mom’s house for Christmas dinner. This time, Jennifer’s brother, girlfriend and their son joined us. We had another amazing meal and celebrated the real meaning of Christmas for me…family!

Getting dinner plates ready for 7 kids

The 4 'big' kids at their own table

Merry Christmas!

Winding down for the night with a few books with Nana before going to bed.

Nana and "Spider-Graham"

Graham and Jack reading with Nana

If you thought the holiday fun was done here for us, WRONG! We still had more to come. Stay tuned for Round 7.

Holiday fun – Round 5: Christmas with Grandma, Mom-mom and Pop-pop

So last year it was decided that it was going to be too much chaos for all of us to try and do all gifts for all kids from my family in one event so we split things up a bit. It was really nice and went well so we decided this was how things needed to go at least until the triplets get a little older and understand more about taking turns opening presents.

This year we were spending Christmas Day here in Raleigh and Nana would be with us so we started our fun a little early. Monday morning my Mom and Grandparents arrived for the first round of fun with us. The boys weren’t getting any ‘fun’ presents this go round, just the clothes we asked for.We started out with a little visit and then got to the gifts.

Anthony and Graham reading with Pop-pop

Chase showing Mom-mom his new Kindle from Meme and Popi

Our homemade (by someone) gift from Aunt Lindsey, Uncle Nate and all the girls! First time any boys would slow down enough for me to get a picture! They also all got monkey themed books to go along with them! LOVE!

Jack showing off his personalized Mickey Mouse shirt - we ALL got them....reason to come soon! If you really need me to explain that is!

We enjoyed ourselves and then had a little pre-Christmas brunch before everyone went their separate ways for afternoon naps. The boys and Jason and I waited for Nana’s arrival and I went to Mass with my Mom and Grandparents that night. 

We waited on pins and needles for the arrival of Santa later that night and we tried to keep things as normal as possible for the boys (like that is possible with the revolving door of fun that is the holidays! Because of that, my annual Christmas Eve picture in pajamas looked a little like this!

Not the smiling boys I got last year and we needed props to keep them all in one place this year!

The next morning, more fun began……stayed tuned to read about that adventure because the cousins and Uncle Matt and Aunt Jen join in the fun with everyone else!