Christmas at Grandma D's

Santa found the kids in Iowa, phew. We were really worried. 

Miss M was excited to help Grandma D with all the fixings she had to make before family dinner on Saturday. They made chocolate cookies, pumpkin pie, strawberry jello with bananas and a few other things.  Miss M can be a good helper until she gets bored.  It all depends on how long it takes her to get bored.  She did ask me today if Grandma D could make her another pumpkin pie because she was disappointment she didn't get to try it while we were there.

Big Will needs time to himself when there's a lot of people around.  He liked to curl up in Grandma's bed and drink his milk.

 Grandma had a kiddie table.  Cate wanted to be at the kiddie table. She doesn't want to be left out.

Uncle Adam playing Ella's new keyboard with Cate.  I think she likes him.  He's so good with the kids.  He's got a big heart.  It shows.

The babysitter plays a game with the kids where they act like animals which start with the same letter as their name.  Big Will is a walrus.  It's hard to find a walrus and it just so happened that Aunt Callie had a walrus purchased.  She was going to return it or give it to someone else until she learned of Will's love of walruses.  I don't exactly know the plural of walrus and I don't feel like Googling it b/c the computer battery is almost out! But look how happy his walrus made him.  He sleeps with the walrus too.  He told us the other day he is the King of the Walruses.  And he loves to go pretend fishing b/c walruses eat fish.  Miss M is a monkey. Cate is a cat. The babysitter Tiff is a tiger. Miss M was determined to get Tiff meat for Christmas b/c tigers eat meat.  Tiff is a vegetarian.

Miss M waiting patiently for her turn to open a present. Present opening is structured at Grandma D's b/c there are 19 people opening presents.  Callie hands them out and we go youngest to oldest.  Waiting 18 people to be able to open the next present can be difficult for the youngsters.

Aunt Cathy bought pie face or one of her kids got it for a Christmas present.  Miss M loved getting pie faced b/c she wanted to eat the whip cream off her face.  She got hit every time her face went in the hole.  It was so much fun. The kids laughed so hard. The adults got into it too.  This was the first year when there were a lot of games played and a lot of adults playing games. I think the adults had more fun with games than the kids!

 That's kind of scary.

These two playing on their devices while the adults and older kids played games in the basement and I packed suitcases. They were so sweet with each other.