Christmas recap continued again (family edition)

Ok, I'm finally back to the recap! I'll start with family Christmas stuff and the next post will be about the baking that we did in December. :) 

{Christmas photos were taken mostly with my phone or in very low light since it gets dark so early here and someone I know is wide awake before the sun rises in the morning.}

Butterfly wings and the red skirt are frequent accessories these days. 

LE loved looking at the presents under the tree, excited to wait until Christmas. She actually burst into tears when I opened one early. (Admittedly, I'm not very good about waiting to open presents, but that one had an instruction to open in advance.)

As I mentioned before, we saw lots of family around Christmas. We opened presents with John's parents the Saturday afternoon before Christmas.


Almost all of the photos of LE around Christmas are of her looking down at a toy or present:

We opened many presents with just our family of four on Christmas Eve evening, and opened the rest of our presents on Christmas Day morning. It was dark outside, and we looked a little rough, so we didn't end up taking many photos of our family.

There are a couple of shots of LE exploring her new dollhouse that Santa brought her (for the record, we are still undecided on whether our house will have Santa). Looks oddly similar to the dollhouse I won a couple of years ago that had lived on the top shelf of her closet. She has a ridiculously good memory and associates new things with other things she saw months ago, so I was completely surprised she didn't see the dollhouse and say, "That's just like the one that has been in my closet for 2 years!"

John was a good Santa and arranged other toys to go with her house for her to play with. 

We had an enjoyable, low key day with just our family.

The following day, we drove down to Chicago to see my parents and the entire Heil family who were all visiting Chicago for Christmas. It was a special time since it had been many years since they had all gotten together, and none of them had met the girls before (except my parents, of course).  Together, we all represented North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Somehow, I didn't get any photos of the group with my camera, but I know there are a lot coming to me from my parents' camera...

We only stayed in Chicago the night of the 26th. The 27th was a whirlwind of family! Separately, we saw my parents & all of the Heils, then my dad's parents (they live on the way home from Chicago), and then John's parents (who were back in Madison on their way home from northern Wisconsin). The only grandparent we missed out on seeing that day was my mom's dad, Gandaddy, who lives in Alabama. It was a fun but exhausting day! The girls did awesome, though!

This year, I was ready to get our tree early, but I was also ready to take it down early, too. On New Years Eve, we undressed the tree and hauled it outside. 

I will not miss the pine needles. 

This last photo is for those who wonder how we get our girls to take good photos. It's not always successful! The photo at the top of this post is ok... Hannah's not exactly chipper. It just went downhill from there. I think both girls were ready for their naps. ;)