Twas the Night Before Christmas...

...and all through the Gray's house--the children were playing, and we were ignoring them.

Team Gray stepped up to the plate and graciously hosted our second annual Taste of Italy Christmas dinner. 

They offered up crafts

 Delicious Italian Food

Delicious Norweigan babies

Delicious men from Ogden (Ogdentinian, if you will)

California 'Cousins'

Plenty of toys and other assorted fun

Ice Cream

ABC Family Classics--Rudolph and Frosty

Learning the art of the dogpile

We stuck with my family's tradition of opening one small gift on Christmas Eve, then packed up Beezie for the night.

Beezie must have been a very good girl, because Santa delivered!

We started with stockings

Then we moved on to the loot

It was a lazy and relaxing morning. B played non-stop with the creche, and changed Mary out for another shepard. Modern family!

We feasted on cocoa and holiday breakfast--delicious and festive

After lazing around, we had Team Andersen over for dinner, and to play with all of our new booty.

B loved her gifts. This year, the main ones were: Minnie's Bow-tique dolls, ramp and cars, train set, Mega Bloks, princess castle, a few movies, cash register, pirate ship, and Jake & the Neverland Pirates figurines. She's been in toy heaven all week long.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday season. From our family to yours!

Temple Lights

We headed over to Oakland to check out the Christmas lights. It was fabulous fun, and the place looked gorgeous.

 

Beezie ran around the perimeter of the fountain and made fast friends. She met this one little girl named Sadie, and used her entire bag of jokes on her. The girl ate it up, and B just kept going. Sadie then declared her a "funny little joke girl." The next day, B told me "I'm thinking about jokes, Mom." We have a little ham on our hand, folks.

This picture cracks me up. I like how they're both giving a little wave to me.