The day after Christmas Aaron and I hosted what has become our annual brunch for my entire family. We cooked up a big meal – Aaron’s famous latkes, tomatoes stuffed with sausage, egg casserole, fried donuts, fruit salad, bagels, yogurt filled strawberries, etc. “Entire family” now means 15 people and it looks like Aaron and I are going to need a bigger dinning room – but we all squeezed in had a great afternoon together. We opened presents and played with the kids. My siblings tried to get all their children to sit still, all in one spot for a photo – which was quite entertaining (see the photo above). I included a series of these photos in the album. We do love being able to host everyone at our place.

Here the album of our Christmas photos. We spent the morning at home, opening our gifts from each other. Then in the early afternoon we went over to Amy and Joe’s. My parents and James, Chrissy and Alice were there as well. We spent the rest of the day opening gifts, assembling or playing with toys and eatting of course. Santa gave Justin a light up stegosaurus lawn ornament (photo below) – which took quite a bit of assembly but was very well received and there were of course plenty of Legos to put together as well. We had a happy holiday and especially enjoyed being with the kids.

Hi all. Happy New Year! Hope 2012 finds you all well. I am still wishing for some snow, but otherwise can’t complain. This is just a quick post of some pre-holiday photos. Aaron and I are still coming back to reality after a mostly lazy week of vacation at home. About a month back Aaron and I finally made the jump to new iphones – yay! And the camera is way better, so I find myself taking more photos with my phone. These are just a few random ones taken in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with a couple I have borrowed from my brothers mixed in there too. We had a busy, but great December and enjoyed lots of time with family. I will post our holiday photos soon. The above is a watercolor of a nutcracker, done by Justin in his art class. I think it’s fantastic.