Merry Christmas ... A Few Days Late and Vacuums Later

A belated Merry Christmas from our family! We spent the past week with good neighbors and family and are enjoying a quiet night before celebrating Christmas and birthdays with the other side of the family.

Highlights of our celebrations included a last-minute Christmas gathering with our neighbors from our cul de sac. Everyone happened to be available Friday night, so we had our 6 families gather at our house for an evening of margaritas, food galore, laughter and fun. We created a saran wrap ball for the kids, which was followed by a plethora of presents from neighbors. I was amazed that the boys received gifts from three different neighbors. One neighbor gave all 6 kids lights for the wheels of their bikes, which was pretty cool. Teddy kept taking one neighbor down to the basement to ride the exercise bike with him, and she was a great sport about it. It's really fun and relatively easy with Teddy to have our neighbors to our house, so there's already talk of a Father Time gathering for January or some other contrived excuse to gather and drink margaritas.

Saturday my family began arriving, which made the boys quite happy, particularly when their aunt and uncle showed up Sunday with the two fun-loving dogs. Teddy adores Zed and Rook, perhaps a bit too much since he lets Rook lick his face non-stop. (She's a puppy who's still working on boundaries ... lots of similarities to Teddy). He loves to chase them, wrestle with them and play with their toys.

Complete disregard for personal space & perfect for each other.

It's nice when there's a house full of people because there's more eyes to keep on Teddy and more people to play with AJ when he needs a break from Teddy. We added two more dogs and three more people Christmas Day with my uncle, his girlfriend and my grandpa. My grandpa usually winters in Texas, but he's been stuck here in Wisconsin much longer than he'd like while waiting for heart surgery. (Apparently that happens when you're 96.) That meant I got to spend Christmas with him for the first time since I was in elementary school, and my boys got to spend Christmas with him for the first time ever. That was the absolute best present I could have gotten this year, and I soaked up every moment.

96 years old wearing my super stylish Goodrs.

The boys got a plethora of cool presents. As soon as Teddy realized the presents under the tree were fair game, he was under the tree unwrapping as he laid there, regardless of whose gifts were in his hands. He was less interested in his pile of presents and preferred to go around the room opening whatever gift caught his interest, so he helped just about everyone. Among his gifts were two vacuums. One is a real one my aunt snagged at Goodwill, and the other is a toy Dyson from his running buddy. His face lit up when he realized he was getting vacuums for Christmas.

A boy and his beloved vacuum.

It's always a bit stressful to have extra people and dogs who don't always get along perfectly, but it's absolutely worth it for the memories we create. From card games to saran wrap balls to incredible Christmas light displays to a Christmas day run, walk and bike ride event, we made many memories ... and learned a few things to make next year's saran wrap balls even more fun.