christmas fun

friday i got out of work and began my christmas vacation (two whole weeks!!!). i headed up to grand rapids on saturday to see the family. saturday night i went to a verve pipe concert (which i wrote about here). sunday we took it easy and decided to go to the later church service (my parents church had four services that day, and they were all the same, so we opted for a bit of the ol' sleeping in). jill, tim and the kids came over for lunch and we had a grand meal (dang, my mom sure does no how to cook!), they headed home, we went for a walk, and then to church. the rest of the night we hung out and just enjoyed each others company. monday, christmas day, we took it easy once again (sensing a pattern?). mom wanted to make a big brunch, so she invited my grandma over, last minute, and we ate a hearty meal. later in the afternoon i made mom and dad go for a walk (which wasnt too hard, considering it was about 5o degrees outside and sunny) so i could wrap all the gifts i got for the family.
around 4:00 jill, tim and the kids came back. the kids opened gifts, and then we had a rather strange christmas dinner: burgers on the grill! with the super nice weather, we figured we would revel in it! we put the kids to bed and then it was time for the rest of us to open prizes! it was a lot of fun, and all the gifts were appreciated very much. for some reason i got an excess of gift certificates, so i guess my christmas gifts will keep on giving for a while! one of the highlights was that my mom got an ipod from my dad- how wierd is that? she wasnt entirely sure what to do with it... after a little explaining and training on the computer, she is very excited about it and cant wait to use it on her walks. way to go dad!
we were done with gifts by around 9:00, and we were all totally exhausted! i felt like i could have crawled in bed right then and slept for three days straight! so, obviously i decided to stay up till about 1:30 puttzing around on the computer. one of these days ill learn my lesson...
all in all it was a very fun time with the family, and i feel very blessed to have the time and opportunity to spend it with them. (chad, hopefully one of these years you will be able to join us too!)
some more fun family christmas photos here.