Merry Christmas from the Blakely's! We hope everyone had a safe and wonderful holiday season. Joannie and I had our first (and best) Christmas with baby Sophie this year. As you can see from the above photo, Sophie's first encounter with Santa Claus was less than cordial. Santa is a very handsome man though I must admit. You may recognize a striking resemblance between your author and the jolly old elf but I'll let you connect those dots. So here's a brief run down of our Christmas holiday and lots of photos to illustrate along the way.
We started the season off right by putting up our Christmas tree, which was a real one by the way. Here's a great shot of Joannie doing her best "waaalaaa" after we got done. Besides beautiful isn't she festive? I'd like to buy an "O" Vanna!
Christmas Eve morning we opened gifts as a family at our house. Yes, even Ace got a gift as shown here. Joannie got him a stuffed bird that chirps and he's been nothing short of obsessed with it. He's even taking it to bed with him at night. Some hunting dog we have!
Christmas Eve was Sophie's first trip to church. We got about 2 inches of snow here on Christmas Eve and it was coming down pretty good on our way there. Christmas time alone is great but a white Christmas too? Come on! Bing Crosby didn't sing that song for nothing! Here we are all dressed up before heading out. Oh and in case your curious, Sophie made it through the entire service no problem!
After church we all headed over to Dan and Jane's (Nana and Papa's) for appetizers, drinks and presents. The cousins all enjoyed seeing and playing with Sophie. One really neat tradition each year is that Nana gets all the kids matching pajamas to wear. Ben, Paige, Emma, Olivia and Sophie all are sporting these in the above photo.
I had to add one more shot of the Santa suit, which was extremely hot but definitely worth it. The kids loved it and the adults got a good laugh also. The look on the kid's faces when I walked though the door was priceless. Ben said, "mom I've been good right?" when he saw me. That's good stuff right there!
On Christmas morning we packed up and headed to Kansas City to Auntie Suzanne's house to do Christmas with my folks. While we were there we went to Cousin Brad, Michelle, Max and Reilly Agadoni's house for a great family get together. Unfortunately I caught the stomach flu that evening so I didn't take any photos while we were there. If you knew how sick I was you'd understand! I'll be updating the blog with Suzanne's photos soon. We opened presents and did the traditional stocking presents which has always been a favorite of my family. We all had a wonderful time despite me getting the crud and Sophie traveled unbelievably for her first road trip.
We hope this finds all of our loyal readers safe, sound, happy and full of the Christmas spirit. Joannie and I have lots to be thankful for this year as it is very plain to see!
