Our Front Porch Looking In

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas Eve

Our family doesn't have tons of traditions, but one that we do have is our Christmas Eve party. For my whole life, every year on Christmas Eve, my mom's side of the family gathers together for a big party. When I was a child we gathered at my Memere and Pepere's house. In later years, the tradition moved to my Aunt Joanne's house while my grandparents flew south for the winter months. And the past couple years my Aunt Janice and Uncle Rob have taken on the duty of hosting this party. It has always been a big event but has grown tremendously in the past couple of years. My Memere and Pepere have 5 children, 12 grandchildren, and 13 great grandchildren!!!! Usually most everyone makes it, but there are always a few missing. But you can imagine this is one exciting party with plenty of food, gifts, energetic children, and lots of love. I was so happy we were able to make it this year.

Before anyone eats a thing or a present is opened, we always have family photo shoots orchestrated by Auntie Nancy. This is always an interesting attempt to get each family photographed. Some years go better than others and this year went pretty well. Here we are, the Delaney/Tribou/Marshall family...minus one. My little sister wasn't here because she is in England spending the holiday with her boyfriend. We missed you, Dee!

An attempt to get all the little ones. You probably can guess we are missing a few, but the ones who are here did pretty well!

Present time!

Santa dropped a sack of gifts on the front porch filled with gifts for each of the kids. What a surprise!

The kids each got a gift from Santa, pajamas from my mom, slippers and the Polar Express from my sister and a bag of goodies from Memere and Pepere. They had so much fun opening all of their surprises. Emma and Abby were also great helpers handing out all of the gifts to everyone.

Abby and Eric checking out a new toy.

Having fun making ornaments.

It was so good to see this smiling face again!

Abby had fun playing with Taylor.

It's hard to tell what is going on in this picture, but if only you could have been there! Someone got a Santa toy that sings and dances. Well, all the little ones were having a blast dancing like Santa. You should have seen some of their moves!

And that's the end of it! Then we went "home" (Nana's house) to leave some reindeer food outside and some cookies inside by the fire for Santa. It was such a great night with family and I'm so glad we didn't miss it!

Monday, December 22, 2008

Let's try this again

Let's hope no unexpected winter weather comes our way. We are attempting (again) to head up north to MA for Christmas. Not going last week was a big disappointment and since then we have been eagerly waiting to get there. So far the forecast looks good and we are keeping our fingers crossed. You never know what may happen in New England! We are scheduled to leave tomorrow evening and we are already packed, ready to go. Most of you probably have presents stacked under your tree. This is what ours looks like...

Two huge storage bins filled with gifts, two suitcases, a tote bag, a cooler, 3 pillows, 3 blankets... and there is more on it's way! I think we may need to borrow Santa's sleigh!!!

You may not hear much from us over the holiday, but I am sure I will have lots to blog about when we return :) Merry Christmas everyone!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Photo Shoot

When the kids were here last weekend, we thought we would try to get a family photo for Christmas cards. This is the first year that I have ever included a photo with my Christmas cards and I was looking forward to doing it. I must admit though, I did not have high expectations. It's always a little challenging to get everyone to cooperate and even more challenging when there is no one behind the camera to help out. The girls usually do great, so I wasn't too worried about them...but Nate is another story. When he is not in the mood to do something, there is no changing his mind. And if you can remember I said that last weekend was one of our more difficult weekends with Nate. So, I went into this project with low expectations. Little did I know how amazing Jake is! He had a little talk with Nate before hand and told him how much Nana missed us since we could not go to MA. Jake asked Nate if we could take a picture all together to send Nana to make her happy. Nate said YES! He come downstairs eager to smile for Nana.

Take one. We all shouted, "Nana!"

I was shocked when I reviewed the photo at how good it came out and was perfectly content with using this picture. And then Nate said, "But what about Grandpa?" So we posed again and everyone yelled, "Grandpa!"

And this one came out good too! I thought this was the end of it, but I was wrong. After this picture Nate reminded us that Sage (Nana and Grandpa's dog) also missed us. So guess what? We took a third picture, this time for Sage.

And this one was our favorite!
I guess one good thing came out of our cancelled trip to MA...we got great family photos!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Mr. Nathan

Mr. Nathan Alexander Marshall is quite the little man. He is as cute as can be whether he is happy, sad, mad or bad. Most of the time Nate is a pretty easy going little fellow. He is funny and clever and loves to make everyone laugh. I must say that this past weekend we only saw flashes of this happy, easy going guy. For the most part Nate was grumpy, stubborn and found himself in his share of trouble. But even when he is naughty, he is still the cutest thing. For example, Saturday night Jake, Emma and I were downstairs talking while Nathan and Abby were upstairs playing. All of a sudden we heard a loud thud followed by Nate saying (frantically) "No, don't tell Mickey...don't tell Mickey!" With those words Jake went upstairs to investigate while I stayed in my seat bracing myself for what he would discover. Apparently, Nate thought it would be fun to swing like Tarzan from the curtains. Obviously this didn't work and Nate tore the curtain rod right out of the wall. He was disciplined and then told to come apologize to me. He came downstairs, head hung low, and said,

"Mickey, I sorry I broke your curtain."

I said, "That's okay, Nate. Accidents happen."

And then he looked up at me sternly, pointed his finger at me and said,

"And Mickey...I forgive you."

I couldn't help but laugh :) He is just too much!