What a fun week we’ve had with all of our family, celebrating Christmas!

We were fortunate to have my parents and Kevin’s parents watch Finn for the first part of the week while Kevin and I worked and Debbie enjoyed some time with her family. I think everyone had fun with our little guy and I know that he certainly did based on all the smiles and chatter I heard. Mom snapped this cute photo above too.

We spent a couple of nights in Mansfield, including Christmas Eve and part of Christmas day. Time went really fast as it always seems to for me these days. Dad, Amy, and I went out for our annual tradition of Christmas Eve shopping and had lots of fun (all of the kids are saying bye to us through the window below). Later that evening we went to the Christmas Eve church service along with my parents, Amy, Andy, and the kids. Kevin snapped the super cute pic of Finn holding the candle at the end of the service 😉 Then we all gathered in front of the tree (and camera) for our annual family photos. That was quite a trip trying to get all of the kiddos to look up or at least sort of in the direction of the camera.  But as always, Amy was able to snap some goodies! We all then headed to a short dessert party at the Dewald’s and then back home to get some shut-eye. We awoke Christmas morning and the kiddos had a bit of play time while the adults grabbed our coffee (or other beverages!). We enjoyed a nice slow pace of going through our Christmas stockings and then had a tasty brunch of sausage, bacon, mush, and eggs before opening our gifts. Griffin seemed to really enjoy everything and loved handing out gifts to everyone. He was an excellent helper.

Greta and Finn are enjoying some tea together, and exchanging some serious looks!
Kevin spent many hours setting up Dad’s new computer, transferring files, pictures, getting his email setup and so on. This image captures it all pretty well 🙂

And then he grabbed a cat-nap (er…dog nap?) before we headed back to Columbus to celebrate Christie’s birthday with a fabulous dinner prepared and hosted by the Ackermans. All of the kiddos opened their gifts too. Finn loved his glider soccer ball (I couldn’t get a non-fuzzy pic of him playing with it he was moving so fast) and his new tractor with farm animals!The next couple of days we laid low, relaxed at home, opened some gifts, and played with our new toys. And enjoyed lots of sweet treats (buckeyes in bed while watching sesame street!) – it is the holidays, right?!  I basically lost my voice (or at least sounded ridiculous!) for a few days and Finn has had a runny nose off and on for a few days. We think he may be teething some as he has been more irritable then typical and he’s grabbing at his jaw and biting his fingers and playing with them in his mouth alot. But nothing poking through just yet. In any case, he certainly loves to play with his new “tools” and try to fix things. On Sunday we headed to celebrate the holidays with Kevin’s family. We enjoyed a nice lunch with the extended Armstrong family at Cookie and Steve’s. Griffin, however, preferred to play and didn’t eat 🙂 Here he is on the floor with Ora – they enjoyed kicking balls and running with balls for quite some time. And also a bit of fun while Finn played the part of bulldozer and kept plowing into Ora on the ground, albeit pretty gently. Then we headed to Brett and Missy’s to celebrate Christmas with them as well as Pat and Jim. I enjoyed far too many cookies while we all opened gifts together. And Griffin absolutely loved meeting and playing with Babou, Brett and Missy’s new dog. She’s a super cute 4 month old boxer/lab mix. Griffin giggled and ran around and received tons of wet kisses. On the way home he kept saying “Babou, nice doggie, bite” as Babou playfully nibbled at his fingers a couple times. It was cute to see him play with such an energetic pup. Sadly, we didn’t have our camera with us and I didn’t snap photos with my phone either – other than this one here, Grandma learning how to use Finn’s nerf gun that he received from Uncle Brett and Aunt Missy. 

We’ve had a wonderful Christmas season and have many blessings for which we are ever so thankful!