Full House for Christmas

This Christmas we had a boat-load of people at our house. It's hard not to when you have seven kids and two of their spouses, two grandkids, two significant others, and one grandma over. That's sixteen people in a five bedroom house. Crowded, busy, loud, crazy, fun, and just what the holidays are all about.

We of course started out with the classic baking day.

We were going to scale it down, but really the only change that happened was instead of gingerbread houses this year, we did gingerbread cookies. Otherwise it grew to it's normal scale of grandness.

We packaged everything up and caroled to all the neighbors as we delivered the goodies. We sounded pretty good with all of us.

Next Kayleen was baptized by Scottie.

It was special to have the youngest of all the Nelson kids baptized and the Spirit was really strong. Weird, my baby sister is eight. Congrats Kayleen!

Christmas Eve we had our typical day of prepping for the Nativity re-enactment.

Lydia and Ammon had fun trying on costumes in preparation.

We put on a great production with Sadie and her boyfriend Taylor playing Mary and Joseph.

I was the narrator, Scott's girlfriend, Polyana, was our lone shepherd, and Kenny, Ryan, and Kayleen were the wisemen.

Brigham and Lydia had the toughest roles as they had the speaking parts to memorize. Brigham doubled roles and played the Angel Gabriel and King Herod (with Ammon as King Herod's lion accessory), and Lydia was the angel that appeared to the shepherd. She did great memorizing and reciting her paragraph for all to hear.

It was a more low-key Christmas Eve with games and wrapping.

This is what the tree looked like before everyone came down for Christmas morning:

And this is a picture of the kids waiting to go see what Santa brought:

We waited a little later this year so Kyle and Katrina could be part of the unwrapping, so the kids were good to wait until eight to come downstairs.

And this is what happened next:

With our traditional breakfast of eggs and cinnamon rolls thrown in the middle, between stockings and present opening.

Scott decided to count the presents as they were opened and time how long it took. For sixteen people we opened 314 presents, and it took 2 hours and 50 minutes. Whew! It was awesome.

Afterwards we went to the church so my uncle and his family and my aunt and her family could join us for a potluck soup bar, volleyball, basketball, and games. It was a good time.

The rest of the holidays, we spent good quality time together by watching movies and playing a bajillion games. Seriously, we love games. We out-gamed many people this year, and included in our repertoire was my awesome new Christmas present, Just Dance 2014.

Some of us were better than others...

Does couple dancing skills predict relationship success...if so...Sadie and Taylor I'm afraid. Haha, when my body doesn't hate me anymore, I'll hopefully be able to join in and look just as ridiculous. I can't wait!

We also showed the newbies that weren't sick a couple of our favorite parts of Washington. Of course that included Snoqualmie Falls.

We had a great time hiking down to the view point, even though we were bummed that they don't let you climb out on the rocks anymore to see how close you can get.

Doesn't my mom look beautiful with my sister? Gorgeous. And doesn't she look silly with me? I love her. And my husband.

It was foggy, cool, misty, and beautiful. We also went to the nearby railroad museum and raced on the tracks, climbed poles, and admired trains. Sadly, my pictures were lost of this. Stupid phone!

New Year's Eve we adventured to Seattle to show off Pike's Place and the new Ferris Wheel they put up.

I kind of was a fifth wheel with these two lovey-dovey couples, but that was cool with me...my husband was busy being my sugar daddy at work. Plus, I had the pleasure of a gentleman tell me I was as beautiful as the birds, and another guy stare creepily at me and after I said hi, trying to reduce the awkwardness, turn around and give me funny looks until I was nervous enough to fall back behind my posse.

We at fish and chips on the shoreline and also visited the Space Needle, and Ye Old Curiousity Shop. The classics. It was gray, wet, and purely everything Seattle.

That night we played more games, and talked until we tiredly kissed our lovers and went to bed.

And that brings us to the new year! Everyone has gone and we are all beginning the new year with exciting things in store....like a couple weddings maybe? ...But you didn't hear it from me...or at least not until it becomes ring official :) It was fun and exciting to have everyone around for all the Christmas festivities and hear what's in store for our loved ones this coming year.