Merry Christmas!

This was our first year hosting Christmas and we were lucky enough to host some of both sides of the family.  Friday was a busy day of cookie making with Grandma Clopper as the rest of our guests arrived.   By Friday night, everyone had made it into town and, between the 10 of us, we polished off a homemade lasagna (the traditional Marino Christmas Eve dinner) before Ryan and Aunt Tuta constructed a pretty sophisticated gingerbread house.

We went to the children's mass at our church on Christmas Eve and enjoyed the pageant while we waited for mass to begin.  Then we came home and had the traditional Clopper Christmas Eve dinner of bread, cheese, sausage, crackers, veggies, dip, and of course cookies in the family room.  Ryan let us know that he thought Christmas was cool because "we get to stay up past our bedtimes and eat in the family room and we don't have to finish our dinners" (in order to get dessert)!  After leaving some cookies out for Santa, placing the gingerbread house right next to the fireplace so Santa couldn't miss it, and reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, all of us snuggled up in our beds in anticipation of Christmas morning.

We weren't disappointed as this was the scene when we awoke:

Look at those stuffed stockings and all the gifts!

We began our leisurely Christmas right about 9am after everyone was awake (Ryan was the last one up).   Ryan was delighted that Santa was able to squeeze in his last minute requests for socks and pancake mix.  Later in the afternoon, our tree got a refill after Cheryl's family was able to join us.

Christmas tree refill

Dinner consisted of a ham and lots of Thanksgiving-like sides and we finished up the evening with the final round of presents and a yummy selection of four pies.  At the end our family room looked like this; it was hard to believe that it could look this full!

The aftermath.

It was so nice to be able to spend Christmas with so much family, and we even got a chance to video chat with Ben, Ginger, Meredith and Alex.  We easily survived our first Christmas hosting thanks to our lovely guests.  Merry 8th day of Christmas to everyone!