Meet Me In St. Louis - Day Seven

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Day

On Christmas Day, everyone in Steve's family goes to their other in-laws homes. So we took advantage and slept until noon. We ate "breakfast" and started packing things up since we would be heading out the next day. We also watched A Christmas Story about a bajillion times. OK, really it was 1 and 3 halves. 1/2 the night before, 1/2 Christmas day then the whole way through and then 1/2 before we decided we needed to journey out of our hotel room and find some type of nourishment. I don't know if you can call what we found "nourishment", but by the time we found it, we didn't care. We drove around for about 40 minutes and all we could find open was Hooters and Jack-n-the Box. We opted to have our Christmas dinner with Jack. Go figure. It does kinda make you wonder why Hooters is open on Christmas day though, doesn't it...

By the time we finished everyone was starting to converge on Grandpa's house. We decided to join the convergence. It was another night of hanging out, playing games, stuffing our faces, watching home movies, dressing up and playing with weapons.

We had a little hat hoopla, but those details are for another post...

Fun with cameras

Fun with weapons.

Fun with cousins. And umbrellas.

And then the goodbyes start. This would be our last time to see everyone for who knows how long. And Mike and Sheila and their family were also leaving the next day to go back to Kentucky. It makes me sad that these kids don't get to see each other more often. They have SO MUCH FUN together. They are getting older and I just wished we all lived closer.

And that's the end of our trip in St. Louis. It was hard to say goodbye. We had the BEST time. Every second was super charged with fun. We were always laughing. We were always busy making fun memories. And most of all we were just enjoying being together.

Meet Me In St. Louis - Day Six

Friday, December 24, 2010

Poor little Miss Addy. She was begging for sleep the entire time we were in St. Louis. We averaged a 2 am bedtime most nights we were there. She would come up to me saying, "Can we PLEASE go to the hotel!?! It's past my bedtime!" On Christmas Eve morning Steve and Mike took some of the kids for another airsoft battle. Aubrey, Addy and I slept in and then went to Grandpa and Grandma's house to make pies. Despite the extra sleep, Addy was out on the couch not long after we got there.

Sierra and Amanda

Sam and Cody showing off their new hats

We played a little dare or dare

The girls played games

What is the deal with this game?!? The boys played their game again.

All the grandkids

Zac realized he missed a few hats the night before so he had another hat/weapon fashion show.

I might have tried on a hat myself

We went back to our hotel LATE that night/ EARLY the next morning and we opened our Christmas Eve PJ's and went to bed. Sometime in the night Santa came and brought the kids their stocking stuff.

Meet Me In St. Louis - Day Five

Thursday, December 23, 2010

On day 5, Mike and Sheila and their kids came from Kentucky to join us. We all met on Main Street in St. Charles.
(if you click on St. Charles you will see a picture of my father-in-law on their website)

Asher, Roy and Steve

We walked around Main Street for a while and froze our patooties off. Once the cold got the best of us we decided to head over to Grandpa and Grandma's house.

At their house the kids had fun playing with Grandpa's hats, armor and weapons. Yep. We had the swords and guns going on. I know. Our family is all messed up.

Zac tried on EVERY hat of grandpa's (except his hat from the Revolutionary war) and I took a picture of him in EVERY hat of grandpa's. That will have to be it's own special post.

Addy

The boys played their game AGAIN.

Addy and Reagan

It was Meagan's Birthday so we celebrated with purple sparkly cupcakes

Grandpa showed the kids his collection of bullets from all different wars

We all hung out talking and then watched some old home movies

Flashback/Flashforward Friday

Flashback: Christmas 1997

Flashforward: Christmas 2010

Meet Me In St. Louis - Day Four

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Today we went to Operation Homefront to volunteer. We helped load up vans with items that needed to be delivered and helped them update their inventory. The kids had fun and it was a great experience for us all.

After leaving Operation Homefront, we went to the cemetery to visit Steve's Mom's grave.

I have always loved cemeteries and this is one of my favorites. We drove around and looked at different headstones. This is a cool one that dates back to the civil war. When we were driving through the civil war section we would see rows and rows of headstones of people who all died on the same day. We also found huge sections of Unknown Soldiers.

We ended up at Ed and Lisa's house. In fact, we are still at Ed and Lisa's house right now. So far tonight we've had a little squirrel action.

The girls had a little spa experience

And the boys of course are in the middle of a full fledged war. It has been going on for hours and there is no hope of it stopping any time soon. Heather and I made a new rule that if they are going to play this game, they must start it before noon. Unfortunately we just made the rule about 20 minutes ago. Too late to save us tonight. There is popcorn popping right now and I think I will be sick, I am remembering the popcorn overload from the Blues game the other night. It's vacation and we have had to wake up extra early every day. I need sleep. I am considering removing this laptop from the table and giving the tablecloth a good hard tug. Whoops! Sorry boys. Game. Over.