Days 198-202 Christmas Story Condensed

We are back from our Christmas holiday vacation and man am I exhausted!

Needing a vacation after my vacation is definitely appropriate in my case!

The drive up to the ranch house was met with fog covered mountains and a feeling of Christmas energy.

Christmas Eve night was spent gorging on great mexican food and cocktails. After dinner we spread out and 20+ played games, watched movies, got caught up on what everyone had been doing and the little children sneaked away to jump on the Air Bed in the back room. My younger sister boarded herself up in the back room so she could finish putting together and semi-wrapping her Christmas gifts that she had bought a few hours before - now that is last minute!

Finally ALL the bebe kids children were off to bed and the house was quite (and the atmosphere was peacful!) Somehow Mr. Strong and I ended up sleeping in the bedroom that housed all the children...WTF! NOOOOOO! The romantic side of being away from home was ruined! We had Doodlebug's feet in our faces all night in this extraordinarily small queen sized bed, because he just couldn't sleep with all the other children! I didn't get "any" much sleep that night. Grrrrr!

I was up early the next morning to watch the beautiful sunrise off the back porch. Man was it COLDDDDD! I was going to go running - but....now I can stand cold - but when the wind is blowing - that is just plain torture!

The morning was filled with cooking the tradional Christmas dinner  - turkey & dressing, ham etc.. My younger sister was making all of us laugh as she tells my mom "to leave the kitchen if your not going to help..." and the promises from me to NOT blog about some of the conversations that were taking place! LMAO! Doodlebug also got to spend some time with Great Grandma playing at the breakfast table.

 The day was filled with a round of air gun wars, a little sight-seeing (the wind was too cold!), opening presents and enjoying the gifts of Santa Clause.

I took a ton of other pictures of all the Wild Game that the ranch has on it, but i forgot to take the paper film off my new camera phone so they (along with about 100 other pictures) were too blurry to see ! Pitiful - I know!

 The next morning we packed up and headed home and the trip home was a quite one! Everyone was exhausted from hard playing, lack of sleep and the crash of excitement overload.

 This is my Christmas story condensed because well - I'm back and WORK calls! It is not because I promised to not talk about some of the extremely funny happenings and conversations that took place or the lack of CLEAR pictures because of operator error or some unexplainable void that is going on between me and Mr. Strong!

Needless to say, I had a great time. I laughed harder than I have laughed in a while and it was great that the whole family could spend time and be together in harmony. We need to do that more often than once a year!

How did your Christmas go?