Christmas Vacation (Part I)

I'm going to have to break this one up - I took a lot of pictures while we were down visiting our families in Oregon and Washington! 

We left on Christmas Eve, which I figured would be a pretty dead time for travel, but the airport was busy and our plane was full.  

All strapped in and hanging out at the airport

Alaska Airlines, who I normally love, messed up our seats and we ended up with a window and middle seat instead of an aisle/middle combo, which was extra frustrating.  Because we didn't have easy access to get up and walk around when Olive got fussy, we resorted to taking funny-face selfies, which she enjoys.

The empty water bottle was a more popular toy than pretty much anything we brought.

Finally made it to PDX, where I took an obligatory picture of Olive with the infamous carpet.  Did you know they're tearing it out?

After a two hour drive to my parents' house, we pretty much crashed for the night.  The next morning - CHRISTMAS!!

At points during our time there, we had something like 20 people in the house.  This trip marked the first time that my brother, sister, and I had been together in something like three years. In the time since I'd last seen Kelly, she had two kids!

Christmas morning we woke up and the kids opened stockings while we waited for Bryan and his family to drive down to our parents' house.   It was basically the last calm(ish) moment we had in our visit there.

Abby and Julian had a ball opening their stockings.  Every item was loudly announced to the crowd - "I got band-aids! Look! Look!"  It was pretty awesome.

We mostly spent the morning hanging out in our PJs.

Grandma snuggles! 

Olive got a new teether in her stocking.  Anything that goes in her mouth is pretty much a hit these days.  Then again, EVERYTHING goes in her mouth, so I can't say the teether was really that special.  Let's just pretend it was her favorite thing ever, okay? 

We got cleaned up before the masses arrived and then the chaos ensued.  Olive and I watched from a safe distance on the couch where I helped her open her presents.  

Most of my Christmas morning pictures are blurry.  Not because the shutter speed wasn't set high enough, but because of the chaos.  It was awesome.

This is Julian and his new sleeping bag.  I feel like this blurry picture exemplifies him.  He's a total ball of energy.

Remember when I mentioned my craft project for Christmas? Here is Grace, modeling hers! I made felt flower crowns for the girls and flower headbands for the babies.  I think they were a hit!

Cousins! They wore those princess dresses ALL DAY

Grace was happy to model for me.  If I ever decide to go sell these online, I'm going to use this for advertising.  She is so beautiful! 

Abby, also beautiful, however, not a fan of me with the camera.  This is her face that says "Over. It." I have a feeling this will be a common expression in about 10 years when she's a teenager.

Kelly was nice enough to model Abby's for me.  I think this is a good look for her!

More hanging out.  Despite the chaos, there were some nice quiet moments.  It was so nice to all be together on Christmas!

Hair pulling. Typical. 

I caught this awesome cousin moment between Abby and Grace.  Aren't they so cute?!

Olive also got to spend a lot of quality time with her little cousin, Elizabeth.  Olive is a whole 13 days older than Elizabeth, so she tried to exert her dominance on her cousin through numerous baby wrestling sessions.  Elizabeth, being born into a house of chaos, can definitely hold her own!

And then, to add to the insanity, it was time for my birthday!!

We only put one candle on the cake because it was ice cream and I think 33 candles would have melted it.

I had a wonderful helper while I opened presents.  She mostly just ate the wrapping paper.

I can't believe this was all one day! More vacation adventures to come!