Having Christmas with three families is joyous, exciting, exhausting, busy and fun all at once. We look forward to each celebration, but we're also a little bit thankful when it's all over so that we can have a chance to sit down and relax.

This year we attended Christmas Eve service at Steve's church with his parents. Afterward, we drove around looking at some Christmas lights. Along our drive we stumbled upon a neighborhood that lined the streets with those illuminated paper bags. The number of bags throughout the neighborhood was very impressive. Later, we enjoyed a delicious dinner back at Steve's parents' house and opened presents by the fire.



Steve's parents just bought a brand new house to be built in May. Rather than downsizing, they are moving to big, beautiful house that will have SIX bathrooms. We only saw it fitting to gift his mom with six toilet brushes...
A fancy new doormat for their new home.
In addition to many other presents, Steve got a new golf club and I received a fashionable camera bag.




We woke up Christmas morning at our house and made our traditional monkey bread for breakfast. While it was busy making our house smell fantastic, we opened our presents from each other. After oohing and ahhing over our new gifts, we quickly ate some breakfast, jumped in the shower, and loaded the car. Before we headed to our next celebration, my mom and Dave stopped by to exchange gifts. Once again, they totally spoiled us! We were on a time schedule, so we quickly cleaned up and headed out.



Our next stop was Christmas with my mom's side of the family at Uncle Mike's house. Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of our celebration! I guess my camera was too busy enjoying some time inside the cute new bag. We played our traditional gift exchange game and came home with a brass bin to hold firewood (we don't have a wood burning fireplace, so it's currently a new home for some blankets), a Galileo thermometer, and some waffle mix.

The last stop of the night was at Aunt Diana's house to celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family. They ate earlier this year, so we missed out on the dinner (our bellies were a little happy about not having to squeeze in another meal). We exchanged presents with our secret Santas...mine was Corinne, Steve's was Aunt Diana. Steve was secret Santa to my dad and I was Rebecca's secret Santa. We got my dad a Capitals shirt to go along with Steve's secret Santa gift to him...tickets to a Caps game!




We are so thankful for all of the time spent with our loving families. We most certainly had a merry Christmas!