Christmas Eve Dinner

Here is the annual Christmas eve dinner post. This year Cory and Shannon made the main course of dinner which was stuffed pork wrapped in bacon.

Here's the pre dinner picture of food and the table.

The main dish.

Maia playing and Sean keeping her from going up the stairs.

One full table!

The cousins table.

After dinner, Cory cracked out the home made eggnog. Ezra wasn't too sure about it at first.

But I think he warmed up to the idea pretty quickly.

Then it was bath time for Maia.

I had to snap a picture of how curly her hair was after her bath! It dried so quickly and became so curly. She has such beautiful hair!

Hanging out with her daddy.

Then with Uncle Cory, which it looks like she wasn't too sure about.

Then we gathered around the Christmas tree to open our sibling gifts to each other.

Sean and I had Joesph, Carrie and Aaron. We made them a set of potions from Harry Potter and magic wands.

It was fun to see the little ones excited to open gifts and to play with toys.

Maia wasn't quite sure about everything that was going on. Granted she was really tired by this point but I think she had a good Christmas eve. This was her second Christmas eve but her first Christmas Eve at the Nelson home.

Christmas Eve Bowling

For the past few years, we have usually gone Skiing/snowboarding on Christmas eve. This year we decided to go bowling. We had pretty much the whole family there, minus Maria and Mitch who were in Wisconsin with there newborn twins.

Baker City Bowl. (Cory, Maia, Mom and Papa)

Even Grandma came out to watch. (Aaron, Jason, Shannon and Grandma)

Aaron and Jason had a good time together.

Maia wasn't sure quite what was going on and just wanted to run around and especially run down the bowling ally.

So she got passed around to different arms while Sean and I took turns bowling.

Angie, Brad and Ezra.

Ben and Grandma

Aaron, Angie, Ezra and Bradley.

Bradley helping Ezra bowl.

Noana and Maia sharing some snuggles.

The newly weds, Scott and Megan.

Bradley and Jason bowling.

Aaron with is post bowl stance.

Maia running around like she owned the place.

We all had such a good time and I'm glad we were all able to get out and do something together!

Baker City

After Santa, we came back and just chilled. We were still pretty tired from our trip and so we good with just hanging out and waiting for the others to get there.

This was taken on Sunday with Maia running around like she owned the place and if she wouldn't have had to compete with Cory's ginormous dog, she would have. 

My Dad built a fence to cover block off the fire place and the Christmas tree. It worked out really well to keep her out of that area and to keep Cory's dog from bothering Grandma. She wasn't to sure about it and didn't like when other people crossed over the fence and she couldn't.

As usual on a Sunday afternoon, you can find the Nelson clan with some sort of game going.

A selfy of Maia and I.

Aaron and loved playing with Maia and hanging out with her. he would show her books and

chase her around.

My Dad built a ramp for my grandma so she wouldn't have to climb the stairs and Maia loved running up and down it. She wasn't quite sure what to do at first so she would crawl down it backwards like she would do with the stairs. When she realized that wasn't necessary, she loved it!

On Monday morning Maia got a piano lesson from Uncle Ben.

Meeting Santa Clause

The next morning we took Maia to go see Santa Clause at the Library in Baker. We almost didn't make it in time as we ended up being the last ones there. Here are some pictures of Maia. As you can probably tell, she is was not afraid of him at all, actually she didn't care if she stayed there.

She clapped her hands for them and gave them a big smile.

The lady kept trying to give Maia a candy cane and Maia could have cared less.

When she did finally take she was like "What am I supposed to do with this?"

I'm glad that we got some good pictures and that Maia was happy the whole time. We finally had to go over and take her off his lap because she was just comfortable.