Christmas 2009

This Christmas our house was full of family, food and friends, as it should be. On the 23rd of December Brad, Holli, Paizlee, Jenna, Lumpy and Wallace all arrived. We ordered pizza and then Jenna, Holli and I took Gracie and Paizlee to see the lights at the Zoo. Unfortunately we were too busy and cold to remember camera's so we don't have any evidence of the beautiful lights we saw. We all loved the lights, but the cold was no fun and Gracie lost her shoe so I was worried that her toes were freezing off the whole time! Ron arrived later that night and joined our party.

On Christmas Eve Holli made some tasty sticky buns (mmmmm) for breakfast and we lounged around visiting until afternoon. We all went to the mall to have lunch and look around before returning to the house to make oodles of cookies and food for the evening. Sean and Nikki arrived late afternoon and joined in the fun. Everyone pitched in to help with cooking and cleaning to prepare for the evening. At 6pm, our friends the Jones and the McAllister's arrived for dinner. We had a wonderful evening and once again I forgot to get pictures. After our friends left we all gathered around the Christmas tree and everyone opened the Nielson family traditional gift of PJ's. Everyone put them on and then we quickly got Gracie and Paizlee to bed so we could start playing Santa! Of course they left out cookies for Santa before going to bed. Tracy put together Gracie's doll house while Nikki, Jenna and Brad put together Paizlee's exosaucer. Holli and I filled stockings by the tree. After all our busy elf work we all laid on the couch and watched a Christmas movie and dozed. We all went off to bed after the movie. Somewhere in the middle of the night I was told that Santa visited and terrified Sean, Nikki, and Jenna who were sleeping in the family room. I am not sure who this scary santa was (Brad) but I heard it was pretty frightening. I think Tracy set his alarm for 4am so he wouldn't miss it.

On Christmas the first thing I woke up to was my little Gracie in her crib babbling. I went in told her it was Christmas! She squinted at me and pointed to the light I had flipped on while covering her eyes and saying "Lights...bright". I asked her what day we open presents under the tree and she said "chrisas". We had her stay upstairs until everyone was ready to open presents then we took her down to a see everything. When all was said and done we had presents everywhere and Gracie was quiet as a mouse playing with her new bike and dollhouse. Paizlee was sitting in her new exosaucer and we had stacks of paper, boxes and bows surrounding all of us. We all decided to go to breakfast once the mess was cleaned up. We all wore our pj's except Tracy (What a party pooper) and drove around for a VERY long time to try to find somewhere to eat. However it took us until about noon to find a restaurant that was open on Christmas. So we had a wonderful holiday breakfast/lunch at the Waffle House of all places. We lounged around the rest of the day and then had juicy yummy turkey for dinner...along with lots of left over cookies, cake and treats. (Thanks Gwen for the tasty Cake!)

The day after Christmas was very special too. We were so excited to be present when Brad blessed sweet little Paizlee Loren Carter. She looked so beautiful and the whole experience was something we wouldn't have missed for anything!

The next few days went by way to quickly with lots of laughing, talking, eating, movies and more. Tracy, Brad, and Ron went to
Cincinnati and went to a Bengal's game too! We loved having everyone here and will miss all of them. I was so excited to let Gracie have a holiday filled with family, friends and loads of fun. We had a beautiful Christmas!