Christmas Day in photos

Andrea from the fishbowl once again issued an Hourly Photo Challenge for Christmas day. I've enjoyed seeing others blog their holiday pictures in this way in past years, and -having joined the iPhone club not long ago- I decided it'd be a fun way to document the day... although my DSLR wasn't far away the entire day and also got put through its paces. 

This was, however, a lot of fun.

Moreso for me than for all my family who had to endure the alarm on my phone going off every hour and me spending a few minutes each time to edit and upload a picture.

Good thing they're used to me having a camera in my hand.

So here it is, our Christmas day in hourly increments...

8:00am... and the kids are still asleep! All five of the older ones! Only the babies are up.

   

9:00am   Baby's first Christmas. For this baby AND my new niece and nephew. 
STILL waiting for the bigger kids to wake up and join the party.

 

10:00am   A trio of minifigures from Liam's stocking.

 

11:00am   Christmas kisses. She's so sweet.

 

12:00pm   Andrew sitting at the window waiting for everyone -who wasn't sick- 

to get home from church, and hanging out with Sir Axlerod and Finn McMissile.

 

 1:00pm   Tucking into the big gifts since we only had time for stockings and 
breakfast before heading to church. It was a tight fit at my sister's, with seven adults, 
five kids (3-9), and three babies!  (wish I hadn't left the black bands on the top and bottom of this pic)

 

2:00pm  Spreads and dips and crackers and fruit and nuts and chocolate and 
coffee and egg nog and juice and Irish cream, oh my.

  

3:00pm   The building begins.

4:00pm   The building continues.

 

5:00pm   Simon on the left and Rowan on the right. Masters of mischief. 

Getting along better than ever before.

 

6:00pm   One of my two (TWO!) jaunty hats. You will see them both often.

 

7:00pm  These particular Christmas decorations are up year round at my sister's place.

 

8:00pm   After seven boys between my older sister and I, we both had surprise pregnancies 
this year AND BOTH HAD GIRLS! Eloise is on the left and Maizy on the right.

 

9:00pm  My nephews received these carousels for Christmas from another aunt. Twitter 
informs me  Es ist ein Weihnachtspyramide!  (translation: It's a German Christmas carousel!)

 

10:00pm   Since someone was sick-and-throwing-up-and-took-an-almost-four-hour-nap-in-the-afternoon, that someone got to stay up late and play games with the grownups.

 

11:00pm   Ticket to Ride is FUN! (depending on how fair charitable you are, I either came in second or last)

 

12:00am   I kind of look like I have no/weird eyebrows here, so just look at the sweet-
and-wide-awake-at-midnight Christmas baby in her pretty rainbow wrap.

It really was a nice, nice day. 

We had fun giving gifts to our family and were thoroughly spoiled in return. We all received gifts that were special and fun and thoughtful and perfect. The boys were thrilled with all their Legos, Peter with his Tassimo (to take to work), me with my hats and wool and jewelry and to-be-exchanged-for-different boots, and Eloise with her crochet hat and handmade dolly.  

We tore through our stockings, ate copious amounts of good food, Peter took Liam and Simon to church where their uncle Joel was preaching (to a higher capacity crowd than was expected for a Christmas Sunday morning!), opened loads of presents in a bit of a frenzy to make sure we were through before my younger sister and her family had to leave for her in-laws, ate some more, visited, put a not-feeling-super-well Andrew to bed for a much needed nap, said "No you can't open any new Lego sets." a dozen times before finally relenting because we realized it was too cruel to make them wait, made some phone calls home to friends, talked to family on Skype, ate even more, built more Lego, searched for already-missing Lego pieces, played with babies, read Christmas stories at bedtime, played Ticket to Ride until far too late and finally went happily to bed.

It was a very good day and a very good night.