christmas with the keels

It seems as if the older I get the more christmases i get to have! Last weekend we traveled to Enterprise to have Christmas morning with my family. My siblings, inlaws and I draw names for each other and each buy gifts for the nieces and nephews. My parents OF COURSE buy for everyone and I mean multiples! I'm not sure how much longer that will last but it will be GREAT while it does :)

We had so much fun on our "christmas" Saturday. Micah was super excited to watch people open presents this year. Every time someone had a gift he'd ask ooohh what'd they have? and every time he opened something he told me I wanna take that to my house. haha! His big gift from my parents were Woody and Buzz Lightyear. He's a HUGE fan of Toy Story and along with those, the Mr. Potato Head Jen gave him and some other presents from us and his Nana he will almost be able to recreate the whole movie!!

My nieces were also SUPER cute. Haley helped my dad be Santa and passed all the gifts out and Keelie said Dora everytime anyone opened anything hoping there was a Dora on it. She's a bit obsessed with Dora!!

Christmas Mornings have always been pretty humorous in our house. There is always something that either goes wrong, an odd incident with the presents, etc. In honor of these I want to share my ten favorite memories/traditions of my Christmases past. (In no particular order)

10. Never failed that my sister who could never wake up on time in the morning would ALWAYS wake up and get everyone else up for our allowed 5 am present opening.

9. No name tag Christmas. My mom thought one year it would be fun to wrap each person's presents in a certain wrapping paper. Great idea except she ran out of paper and started using other paper and couldn't remember whose was whose. I think David opened ALOT of Jen's presents that year :)

8. Opening an accessory first. You always knew if you were getting the camera you wanted for Christmas because they would make you open the film first! (back when cameras used film)

7. One year we bought our dogs stuffed animals for Christmas. They were all destuffed within 5 minutes. They made a bigger mess than we did.

6. Pre present story. My mother is OBSESSED with prefacing presents. Tim HATES it but it just wouldn't be christmas without hearing the who what when where and why about each gift :)

5. Peeking at the tree. The same sister who always woke everyone up to open also always woke me up in the middle of the night to check out the tree. We just had to see if everything was out there yet.

4. Price tag Christmas. One year my mom forgot to take price tags off of pretty much everything.

3. One year our tree fell down. It's only happened once in our life and it just happened to be the year my mom had hung up all her vintage ornaments she got after her parents passed away. Was not at all funny then but we can look back with some humor.

2. My dad always shops for my mom on Christmas Eve which also happens to be his birthday.

While everything else is not in any order #1 is my #1!

1. My most memorable Christmas gift as a child was getting Teddy Ruxpin!!! The humorous part (if my memory serves me) is that he didn't work and we had to drive to Montgomery which was the closest place that had another one to exchange it. I LOVED that bear so much!

Awwww I love Christmas memories! Can't wait to start making my own with my little family :)