Allen Family - Christmas Part 1

This year we had the pleasure of celebrating Christmas over a week and a half with our families! First we spent time with my parents and family and then we went up to Virginia and spent time with Brett's parents and family.

So here's for Christmas Part 1: Amanda and Nate got in from Hong Kong late on Saturday Dec. 20th. The next day, we all went to the Christmas Cantata at my parent's church and then headed up to Bonefish for a birthday dinner. We celebrated my sister's birthday (Dec. 17th) and my dad's birthday (Dec. 22nd). These pictures pick up with the following day when we had our Christmas celebration at my grandparent's house. (One of my favorite traditions!)

Every year we take family pictures on the stairwell....not a bad looking group!

Jacob, my cousin, played some songs for us on his saxaphone...he really did a great job!

We have our BIG smiles in this one!

We read the the Christmas story and then gave each other presents. We always share lots of smiles and laughter when we give each other gifts. In this picture, Lindsay is excited to open one of her presents. My Aunt Alice is sitting beside her.

Adam (left) and Brandon are huge Steelers fans. I am sure they are very excited about the Super Bowl!

Christmas Eve day we spent the day at my parents' house. One of the activities included making sugar cookies. As they were making the cookies, I kept stealing and eating the dough...yum!

We all had such a fun day together! It was wonderful having Amanda and Nate back in town!

My grandparents joined us for the Christmas Eve service at our church and then came over to my parents' house for classic holiday meal. By the way...aren't they a great looking couple?! I hope I look that good as I age!

My mom prepared quite the feast! It was delicious!

We stayed over at my parents' house pretty late on Christmas Eve. We went home, wrapped some more presents, played with Cali, and called it a night right about 1:30am. Somehow we managed to look halfway awake the next morning as we celebrated Christmas Day and also opened presents.

It was such a fun morning!

Amanda and Nate - they are such a wonderful couple!

This year, Brett and I were really creative about the way that we shared my parent's gift with them. They opened the box and had a letter with clues and they had to try to put it all together. The letter had lots of song titles in the message that we wrote to them. It was funny to see their face when they opened the actual gift and saw that they are going to see Elton John and Billy Joel in concert. That's a fun memory!

I couldn't talk about Christmas without throwing in a picture of Maddie....she enjoyed the treat from her stocking! What an adorable puppy!