We had a wonderful Christmas with all of our families, spending most of the gatherings in the best place we could think of - our new home! It was great!
We had our first Christmas of 2010 with the Jolliff's on December 11th. The four little boys had a lot of fun opening gifts and being together!
We hosted the Ballance Brunch in early December, about 40 attended! It was wonderful to have all the cousins here, minus a few, and those that traveled from Nashville, TN, Kansas and Oklahoma. We had littles ones too! Such fun to see our basement full of children playing together as if they hadn't missed anything since last year!
Then we had our FIRST Christmas in our new home. It was so great to wake up and watch the boys open gifts and see what Santa had brought. My brother, John, came the night before and spent Christmas day with us, but he was out deer hunting for the early festivities. We fixed lunch and Carl, Jessica, Gigi and Zeb came over. We cooked a turkey and all the fixins'. It was fun and we enjoyed more presents and games.
My dad and sister and family came later in the evening. We opened more presents and enjoyed watching the kids play with their new toys. They all stayed overnight and the guys went hunting the next morning, after church.
Finally, our last Christmas gathering was January 2nd, at our house. We celebrated with my Mom and Mike, John, Amanda, Amy, Phil, Maddy & Ella. My mom and Mike were in Florida for Christmas so we had to wait for their return! Really we just like to spread out the celebrations...We had a lighter lunch with ham, casserole, and lots of appetizers. Later in the evening we had our tradition of won-tons (Grandma Miller started this many years ago) and Amy brought a new appetizer, crab rangoon. YUM!
We enjoyed ALL of the time spent with our families over the holidays!
