Christmas and New Year Cheer...better late than never!!

We survived the holidays! They were FULL of family, food, fun, and of course plenty of time passing Owen around! Since Owen was born smack in the middle of the holiday season, we were blessed enough to spend time with both of our families. My sister and her family got to spend Christmas week with us and it was so much fun getting to have Santa visit our house and leave presents for my niece, nephews and Owen. My niece Grace made fast friends with the neighbor girl, Kalie, across the street. They made Christmas ornaments out of Jolly Ranchers and cookie cutters and they made "reindeer food" out of glitter and oatmeal. On Christmas Eve they spread their reindeer food all over our front yard and Kalie's. Someone in our family, don't remember who exactly, was craving Chinese food on Christmas Eve, and so our Christmas Eve dinner was spent at Lin's Garden Chinese Buffet. It was a first for us all, but I must say that we had a blast eating all the Chinese food we could handle! We topped our Christmas Eve festivities off with Christmas lights at the town square and then headed home so the kids could go to bed and the adults could set up for Santa to come! As you can imagine with a house full of kids, Christmas morning was packed full of laughter, excitement, wrapping paper EVERYWHERE, and tons of toys! We spent New Year's Eve at our house cooking a FANTASTIC dinner with our friends Kate and Dave.
We had yummy salmon and blue cheese appetizers, pumpkin risotto and apricot stuffed pork tenderloin. Kate bought Owen a flashing New Year's Eve bow tie, which he wore for about the duration of these pictures and then started to cry!
Kate and I stepped back and watched John talk Dave through changing Owen's diaper..so cute!
It truly was a great New Year's Eve and a wonderful holiday spent with all the ones we love!