*Merry Christmas*

Whew! It has been a rather busy last few weeks so I'll take awhile to enjoy a cup of coffee at Woods with my sister and recap of all of the activities from the last couple weeks....

We celebrated Sister's *18th* birthday with a night by the fire and family games. 

The Boy and I took Brother #2 out for a night of glow-in-the-dark mini-golf and bowling. 

I think I earned my code name of 'Destroyer' with that great score. Record high! 

We kicked off the Christmas parties with a night at Grandma Dee's. 

Brother #1 with his nice new knitted hat. 

After all the gifts were opened everyone was buried into books of Ripley's Believe It or Not until we played a few games of Qwirkle.

Then a couple nights later we made our way to Grandpa and Grandma Van Dalen's family party.

A fun night playing with family ~ chasing cousins and spending time together. 

Ignore brother #1 - he hasn't learned to smile yet.

love this beautiful girl :)

there was an unattended auntie's camera so we took some lovely pictures *hehe*

Then we saw most of the same family the next night at Grandpa & Grandma York's for Christmas Eve.

We couldn't wait to open presents! 

Once again at least half the people were lost in some sort of book or checking out what they could share from someone else's pile. 

But what party is complete without a camera being unattended?

After such a fun night {tons}of laughs and food it was time to go to home and to bed so Santa could come! And as a tradition Santa dropped off a gift early ~ PJ's! 

We made it home and everyone hustled to bed to dream of sugar plum fairies and snow. Neither of which appeared sadly. But the next morning there were gifts awaiting under the tree! 

I am rather pleased with how the gifts I found for my loved ones turned out!

 Morning picture in our PJ's

We enjoyed our morning by making sticky buns and as they baked we opened our stockings. Then we ate the most delicious sticky buns I've ever tried. Then ran {well at least the kids did} to open the gifts under the tree. Santa left only a few presents for us to open hmmm what could they be? 

We got to open one which told us that we had to present some sort of clue to the parents before we could open the big gift. Inside the box we did open were a couple of puzzles. Two weren't even opened so we moved past those and poured out the one in a zip lock bag.

Refusing to be stumped by a puzzle with no picture

We slowly assembled these sections:

Sister presented our best guess that it was some sort of Route 66 road trip. Bingo! 

from here

We opened the big box to find out this summer we are going on a 3 week road trip along the old Route 66! We will travel down in an RV to start in Santa Monica, California then follow Route 66 all the way to Chicago, Illinois! I'm stoked to see parts of the country we haven't seen before and to maybe catch a glimpse of what America looked like way back in the day when gas was about 10 cents and life was simpler.

Christmas day also included an afternoon at The Boy's family get together but I don't have pictures from that. 

So that's how my Christmas went! I hope yours was just as much fun and filled with as much love and laughter :) Now all that is left is to ring in the *New Year*!