Christmas Stuff

I had visions of a family picture by Jean's beautiful tree. This wasn't quite what I pictured. I was thinking something more a long the lines of my kids in the outfits I had picked out for them for Christmas and all of us standing by the tree smiling. But this is what we got, and this is what it was. Superman shirt and new pajamas. Dad's shoulders and wiggling out of my arms.

Merry Christmas!

And this might have been the theme for Christmas 2013. Nothing seemed to go quite as I had imagined. Regardless, we celebrated and I am reminded how grateful I am for family and, of course, the birth of Christ.

All of the grandchildren. My brother and his family surprised my mom and walked in the door Christmas Eve. They drove to the cities from Tennessee, celebrated Christmas with both sides and had a gig at O'Gara's.

Christmas Day morning we had our own celebration at home. But those photos are on my phone and my computer is not wanting to cooperate with my phone so you're stuck with my real camera pictures. Here are kids opening gifts at Grandma and Grandpa Antonello's. The whole going in a circle and waiting your turn to open a gift thing proved to be almost impossible for a certain three year old.

We headed to Lutsen Saturday morning and made it in time to ski for the second half of the day. I stayed in my boots at the bottom of the bunny hill and took pictures. Veda's first time skiing and she loved it. She kept on wanting to do it by herself not realizing she'd totally wipe out. So she settled for going down between Joe's (or uncle mike's) legs.

This picture makes me laugh. Veda is having a ball. Grandpa's ski outfit is a little outdated, ya think?

 Joe ended up taking Silas down a few 'big' hills and the boys had a blast. His skating lessons have really helped him ski.

Sunday we woke up to -15 degree weather, so we had our own fun in our condo.