Christmas # 3

On December 19, we had our annual Wilson Family Christmas. My grandmother insists on hosting it in her modest home in Guthrie Center, and has only recently allowed others to bring food to help. She makes breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 20 of us and also has a ton of the traditional Christmas yummies. My personal favorite is the frosted sugar cookies and her Egg Casserole. I should mention that my grandmother is a farm girl, born and raised on a farm, married a farmer, and only left the 1,000+ acre farm when my grandpa died a few years ago. She always has something ready to eat whenever you show up, even if it's on 15 minutes notice, she'll have something for you to munch on. She is one of my favorite people in the world. Anyways, back to Christmas. Here's Tessa smiling at her GiGi (that's slang for great-grandma).

She now allows others to help prepare food and bring goodies, so Joel and I brought cheese dip and chips and some ginger cookies and some chocolate crinkle cookies. We always have a huge breakfast consisting of cinnamon rolls, caramel pecan rolls, orange rolls, fruit, juice, and the famous egg casserole. After breakfast, which is usually served promptly at 9am, we take family pictures, which is the most dysfunctional hour of the year in our family. The hundreds of outtake photos trump the 3 good ones we get every year, but it's hilarious to just sit back and watch the madness unfold.

 Our new family of 3! This one actually turned out ok, which was surprising because Tessa decided she didn't want her picture taken for most of these and made it very clear!

Here is GiGi with her great-grandchildren and her grandchildren that have produced children (myself, my brother, and my cousin Matt) We took about ten of these photos, and this one was the best one, which cracks me up because my baby is crying, Noah is blocking his face, and Isla is intrigued by the wall. Actually, I think Isla was intrigued by the babies because later that day we found her trying to play with Tessa's eyes. Isla is 11 months old, and such a riot. And Jaxon is being his usually silly self, posing and hamming it up for the camera.

And, here's the whole fam damily. We are a wild bunch, and there is never a dull moment!

Then, we all piled into her living room and exchanged presents. Santa was good to me this year, I got 3 copies of the same Rascal Flatts CD! Luckily, I also asked for Zac Brown Band, Carrie Underwood, and Lady Antebellum so I just exchanged them. I also got a sweet food processor so I can make baby food and process other food items. Joel thought it was unnecessary, but he just doesn't understand the joys of chopping and pureeing any food item. I could make cake soup in my new food processor. If you are unfamiliar, you take cake, add water or milk, and puree it. Voila, cake soup. Ok, I won't be making any cake soup, but it will get used quite often!

 We always sit in the same seats every year, and this year was no different, except my mom and aunt had extras on their laps. They are proud grandmas and entertained the babies during the gift opening. After we were done opening presents, we ate lunch, which is cheese soup, chili, oyster soup, and this year, vegetable beef was added on the menu. Grandma makes dinner rolls (from scratch of course) and we have all kinds of munchies to go along with it. We spent the afternoon and evening eating, drinking,and playing games, which always leads to a stomach ache because we laugh so hard. If you take 13 young adults, aged 21-29, and give them the opportunity to say inappropriate things while getting away with it, you'll turn a perfectly nice Christmas into dirty bad fun. And we did. Look up the game "Things" and then use your imagination about what could come from that.

We also took a couple shots of the new babies, Tessa and her cousin Noah, who is 12 days older. Grandma of course had to have them in coordinating outfits.

We headed home at about 7pm so we could get the peanut to bed, and started the next morning with another Christmas! It was such a long day, but is always so fun and we look forward to it every year. We are already excited for next year when all the babies are very mobile.