Christmas Weitzel Style

This year my sister Chloe took over on planning the Christmas brunch. However, when I made these maple bars a few weeks back I knew that they had to be a part of Christmas morning. They were even better than I remembered them being and a huge hit!
 

Christmas morning with my family is always so much fun. The sheer numbers make it a long process of handing out gifts and watching others open. My mom says that next year she will help Santa get everything positioned under the tree better so that everyone's presents are together and no one's gifts get left hidden away somewhere. There were only a few gifts that didn't make it under the tree. Unfortunately one of them was Jonathan's. He had a rough time with that, but there was another gift from the name drawing to open so he got distracted by that.

I may have told him that the elves were playing a trick on him and his his present since he had been being so naughty that morning (which he had been being a stinker). I found it later that evening in my parent's garage up on a shelf. I love my family:)

The kids each got a book. Adrian and Luke both got National Geographic books. Angry birds Nat Geo books. Adrian's was a book about birds narrated by the Angry birds. Luke's was a book about space narrated by the Star Wars Angry birds. Coolest.books.ever. Jonathan got There's a Fly Guy in My Soup and Reagan got Shoe-la-la. Also good books, but just lack the super cool factor that the angry birds adds;)

 

 

Aunt Ashleigh came through with some My Little Pony for Reagan. This was especially awesome since the night before Reagan had been pouting that she didn't get any My Little Ponies. I promise my kids aren't spoiled--I think they just have a lot of faith that if they ask Santa for it that it will come.

 

Reagan got upset that we wouldn't open her My Little Ponies in the middle of the wrapping paper chaos. Jonathan could care less about her since he got an Iron Man action figure from Aunt Paige. All thoughts of a missing present had now left his mind.

 

 

 

Aunt Autumn and Adrian have been playing Hero Factory legos together a lot. He got her some for her birthday and she got him some for Christmas.

The best moment of Christmas at my parent's was what I got from Andrew. He drew my name in the drawing and I did sort of nag him a little over getting the present in the box going to their house. (Did I mention I was done and ready 10 days before Christmas this year?! So that missing present was the only thing for me to worry about. Sorry babe!) When it was time for him to give me my gift he got up and read the sweetest letter he wrote about how he feels about me and all I do for our family. There were very few dry eyes in the room when he had finished up. My gift from him was an amazing (seriously.amazing.) blanket that is incredibly soft and warm that I can wrap up in when he is gone this year and a CD of songs to listen to when we are apart. I might have spent a couple of nights snuggled under that blanket on top of our covers already since it is amazing. I seriously have the coolest husband ever.

(Just to be clear: Andrew is not being deployed this year, but he will be gone quite a bit for various training exercises and other military stuff. Sometimes just overnight, but other times for 2 or 3 weeks. We miss him tons when he's gone, but it makes welcoming him home that much more fun!)