Monday, December 03, 2012

Christmas with the Sand's

Yesterday we traveled to New Munich, MN for Christmas with my dad's side of the family!  My dad has quite a large family - he has 7 siblings all of which had 2-4 kids of their own.  Now quite of few of those kids (my cousins) have started families and have added 2-3 kids to the group so needless to say we have outgrown my grandparents farmhouse and Christmas is now held at the Fire Station... yup, you read that right!  We do a potluck lunch and then we just hang out and enjoy each others company.  The weather this year was beautiful (mid 50's in December, love it) so the kids spent much of the day running around outside.  We did have a surprise visitor to our Christmas again this year... Santa and Mrs Clause and their little elf helper showed up after lunch with gift bags for all the kids.  The kids were so excited.  They sang some Christmas carols for Santa and then they all gathered around and waited patiently for their name to be called to they could sit on Santa's lap and get their bag of goodies.  Colton had no problem running up to Santa and sitting on his lap.  Mason on the other hand was not a fan, not one little bit!  We were able to bribe him with a candy cane just so he sit and take a picture.  I tried later on to get a picture of my boys together with Santa and Mrs Clause outside... Mason let me know that it just wasn't going to happen!





My cousins Sheila, Alecia and I kept our tradition going and took our annual picture with our boys!  The three of us are only 6 weeks apart in age and we all have two boys now within 5 years of each other from oldest to youngest.  My cousin Alecia is due is April so we will see if the streak of boys continues for another round (well for her, not sure we will be joining the round again as two seems like a pretty good number for us)!

We also decided that we needed to get a group picture of Grandma and Grandpa with all their Grandkids (and spouses) and Great Grandkids!  Luckily it was nice enough outside to take the picture because we have become quite the large group (and we were still missing  a few of my first cousins)!
Overall it was a great Christmas Celebration, I love the chaos of our big family and all the kids running around.  Wouldn't want it any other way.  I truly feel blessed that I still have both my grandparents healthy and able to spend Christmas with all of us and that my boys have the chance to get to know their Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Sand!  My Grandpa is 85 and my Grandma just turned 80 last week... I would say they are looking pretty sharp, wouldn't you!?

1 comment:

  1. Oh, Mason's face in those photos... he clearly was not happy about it. But great photos capturing the moment! :) And your grandparents are adorable.

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