Portland Christmas

Here is our Christmas in pictures:
We arrived on Wednesday night and enjoyed the annual neighborhood progressive dinner with my folks.
The next morning, I joined Sabrina, Jenny and Molly (friends I grew up with) at Bumblekiss for breakfast. We are thinking this needs to be an annual tradition for those of us in Portland on Christmas Eve. We had so much fun eating delicious breakfast foods and catching up on life together.

My mom ended up only having two kids show up to care for on Christmas Eve, which turned out to be a blessing since they were awesome playmates for Emilio and Gabi. We bundled up and took a walk to the park together.



Luci liked the swings!
One of our family friends brought their granddaughter over who has been Emilio's buddy for a few years now. Emilio and Esabella had fun playing together.

We baked a cake for Jesus and let the kids decorate it.


We went to Christmas Eve service at Mom and Dad's church.


We then headed over to our good friend Laurie's home for a Christmas Eve party. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for all of your readers, I didn't get any pictures from our evening there. We had a nice time though.
The kids got into their Christmas jammies at home and put out cookies and milk for Santa. They also got to open one gift.



The kids slept in until about 7:15 on Friday morning, which is late for Emilio especially. They came upstairs to find my parent's living room looking like this:


They checked to make sure the cookie had been eaten by Santa, and then opened their stockings.



They proceeded to open several more fun items including a talking microscope, Littlest Pet Shops, and a bopper penguin, and more. What fortunate children they are.









We put together toys, played games, and cleaned up the big mess we made that morning. My mom's family came over in the late afternoon for Christmas dinner. We were packed into my folks house, but it was fun. We had a very nice Christmas, and a funny one too. One of my uncles was pretending to be a pig to Gabi, and he asked her if he had a curly tail. She replied, "Nope, but you do have a penis though." Those of us that heard her matter of fact statement keeled over laughing. She's blunt!

The next morning, John and I were able to get away with out kids and meet some friends visiting from Chicago up at Jim and Patty's coffee shop. We visited for a few hours and it was a great treat. John went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie later in the afternoon, and my Grandma came to visit and we played Phase Ten Twist with her. Fun game by the way. That night, Andrew and Karen Rose came back over and we all went out to Romo's Latin Quarter for dinner (an old friend of the family's that has a yummy Mexican restaurant). We returned back home on Sunday.