Our Christmas

This Christmas was one of the best ever. We had so much fun with our families!

The Christmas festivities began on Christmas Eve. I went to the Christmas Eve service at church with my family. It was a great time of worship, and Luke played with the band. My favorite part was when we all lit our candles and sang Silent Night. It was so beautiful!

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After that, we had our Christmas party for my mom's side of the family. First, we had a delicious dinner of lasagna together

Grandma's beautiful table setting

After dinner, Grandpa read the Christmas story from the book of Luke.

We had our white elephant gift exchange. This was a fun time, full of laughs, as usual.
Aunt Beth

Julie

And finally, we got in a circle and opened our poppers, a Christmas Eve tradition. We pull on the ends of our poppers all at the same time and then all kinds of little prizes fall out. Like plastic toys and paper crowns, jokes, and trivia. Afterwards, we all tried on our sweet paper crowns, read our jokes, and played with our toys.

Me and Luke

Mom and Dad

Julie and Andy + Andy's sweet gift for the white elephant exchange.

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Then it was time to exchange gifts with Luke's family. It is a Christmas Eve tradition. Here are some picture highlights:

Beautiful Tree

Luke's helmet from his sister and brother-in-law. He wore that thing for two days straight *eye-roll*

SIL Maria, opening a gift

Luke's sister, Diana, put one of Luke's gifts in jello, a la, the Office. The top of the box said "To Dwight, From Jim." Right away, before opening it, Luke said, "This is in jello, isn't it?" If you're an Office fan, you get this. Haha...it took him a good 20 minutes to get it out! It ended up being two blu-rays.

The two Lukes got Nerf guns. This is just a glimpse of things to come in the next 24 hours...

We had lots of fun exchanging gifts, and then playing the new Wii that Diana got from her parents.

Well after midnight, we headed home.

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On Christmas morning, Luke and I woke up to exchange gifts. I went up to the living room to find this: The largest wrapped gift I've ever received!

And this is what I found inside:
two end tables
And a square coffee table

Luke MADE THEM!! I was so surprised, and thought he did such a great job! We will have them forever, now!

I love that the coffee table is square, because I think it looks perfect with our wraparound couch. Also, I love the spot for storage underneath.

Along with that, he also got me the Beauty and the Beast and Despicable Me blu-rays, and an Amazon gift card to start my Kindle fund. I got him the Inception blu-ray and a Peyton Hillis jersey. And we also got the couch as a Christmas present to one another a few weeks ago. I guess we kind of over-did it this year!

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Our first stop on Christmas day was at my parents' house for my dad's side of the family's Christmas party.

First we exchanged gifts
...LOTS of gifts

Julie

Andy and his Harry Potter calendar

Luke and his Ohio State calendar

Grandma

We got Dad this awesome headlamp

We will enjoy this hot cocoa from Mom and Dad!

Then we ate a delicious lunch of turkey and ham sandwiches

The boys fell asleep for awhile watching A Christmas Story...it was a long morning :-P

And then we had another white elephant gift exchange
Grandma got a football...we all got a kick out of that.

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Before long, it was time to head to Luke's grandparents' house for his mom's side of the family's Christmas party. This was our final stop of the day. First we ate yet another meal, and once again, it was delicious! Then we exchange gifts here.Di and Leah

And when we were just about done, Luke's grandma passed out one final gift to all the grandchildren and their spouses. Here's what was inside:
Naturally, we ripped them out of the packaging, and the Nerf Gun War of 2010 ensued. It was so much fun!!

Possibly the coolest picture ever...except for the fact that Luke's pointing the gun at my head! And please notice that we're mostly in our teens and twenties

Once the "war" was finally over, some of us girls headed next door to Luke's Aunt Judy and Uncle Mike's house to play "Just Dance" on their Wii. I had never played it before, and it was so much fun! A good workout, too!Leah, Maria, and Diana

After that, we said our "goodbyes" and headed home, where we cleaned up and settled in after a crazy couple of days, and Luke got ready to head out to Colorado the next day.

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I am so thankful and feel so blessed by our families this Christmas! I loved every minute of the holiday this year.

I hope everyone else had a blessed Christmas too, and I can't wait to read all about them!!