Christmas 2010, Wampler style

My family lives in Salt Lake, Chris's family lives in Idaho, and until this year, we lived between them in Logan. When Chris and I first got married, we agreed that we would switch off Thanksgiving and Christmas...we spent our first married Thanksgiving with my family and our first married Christmas with Chris's family, then switched the next year. For our first four years, that system worked very well.

I threw it off this year, though, when I informed Chris that I wanted to spend Christmas at home, being our first year as official homeowners. I just really wanted to have Christmas in my own house--now that I actually had a house. Chris in turn informed me that we couldn't ditch out on his family's year, so we invited them all to our house. Yep. All of them. We had the two of us, two parents, two brothers, two sisters, two sisters-in-law, two toddlers, and two dogs. Talk about a full house.

One precursor to Christmas Eve...


I don't like to risk having my kids open their presents early. Let's not even go there. So, right up to Christmas Eve, all presents were kept well out of reach on top of the entertainment center. I actually thought it looked pretty cool.

Once the girls were in bed, obliviously awaiting Santa's visit, all the presents were moved down to be actually under the tree.


Then Santa came and filled everyone's stockings.


Well, kind of. Not everyone actually brought stockings to our house, so he made do with what we could find...

Whatever works!

And Christmas Morning, in all its pajama glory:


For some unfathomable reason, both girls seemed much more interested in reading their new books than actually opening presents. As a mother/teacher, I know I shouldn't complain, but I thought they were taking too long. I wanted them to see what they got!

Jane's most exciting present was her princess dress up clothes. She wears them constantly.


Chris's most exciting present was a Fry Slicer for potatoes. Unfortunately, it actually broke the first time he used it. Sad. We are officially on the lookout now for a better Fry Slicer...maybe one that costs a little more than $6.


Megan provided our side adventure for the day.


She woke up Christmas morning with pink eye. Ugh. Luckily, Janet's brother-in-law Sean is a doctor. One call to him and he wrote out a prescription, his wife spent an hour hunting down the only open pharmacy in the valley, and Chris headed off to pick up the all-curing eye drops. Family is a wonderful thing.

Once the excitement of presents was over, there was a great migration into the kitchen to prepare our hopefully-now-traditional Christmas Day feast: spiral sliced ham, made from scratch mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, jello, crescent rolls, and sparkling cider (thank you, Michael and Amanda). And olives. Can't forget the olives.


The best part of having so many people at our house? I don't think I actually cooked a single thing in that entire meal... Awesome. And man oh man, it was tasty.


The rest of the day was spent playing games and just hanging out. Good times.


Thank you, Wamplers, for coming to our home for Christmas. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did (even with the dogs). And I hope everyone else had a delightful Christmas with your families, too!