Christmas 2010

On Christmas morning, we actually had to wake the kids up around 7am because Jason was just too excited to sleep anymore.  After waking from the fog, Ellie remembered what day it was and rushed downstairs.  Santa was very good this year, and the kids favorite gift... the Wii race cars.  They are awesome.  Ellie has become quite good at Mario Kart now, thanks to her new wheels.  The cars are even supposed to hold up to 300 lbs, so J and I may be having some races too.

Santa also brought a John Deere gator battery powered car for the kids, which they are also very excited about.  Unfortunately, we got a big snow storm right before Christmas, which makes for a beautiful white Christmas, but is not conducive to testing out the new wheels outside.  I found that we took a lot of video of Christmas morning, but not too many pictures... oh well.  The one below is the kids modeling their new bath wraps.  There was even a froggy one for the new baby, when he gets big enough to wear it.

After our festivities at home, we all showered and got dressed for round 2, at Aunt Pam's house.  This is the annual Freed Christmas gathering, and this year, we squeezed everything into actual Christmas day.  With Christmas being on a Saturday, it seemed like people had less time off from work, so there was a lot of feting crammed into a short period of time.

Max loves hanging out with older boys...I think it is his escape from playing with a big sister every day.  And he especially loves cousin, Justin.  Justin is very good and patient with Max, including helping him open his gifts.

Ellie and her cousins were so anxious to open gifts.  I remember those days...begging my parents to open gifts before they'd even finished eating.  And Ellie got some great things this year.  Thank you everyone.

After the Freed festivities at Aunt Pam's, we headed over to Papa & Mamaw's for our immediate Freed family Christmas evening.  We had a nice dinner with our Christmas crackers (note the paper hats in some of the pictures).  And again, Ellie and Paige were very excited to open more gifts.

Baby Cole was ready for the present carnage to begin as well.  Check out that smile.

And the final Christmas event was with the Marler family, only this took place on New Year's Eve.  My sister and her family were fighting a GI bug the week before Christmas, so we elected to postpone Christmas for a week.  It was a nice low key Christmas/New Year's, where we weren't on a schedule, and could just hang out, eat, and visit all day.  What a great way to end the holiday season.