Christmastime with the Vandehey family

As mentioned in a previous post, we spent many days with each of our families at various locations throughout our two week vacation. I will let the pictures do a majority of the talking once again, this time, sharing the story of Christmas with my side of the family.

Within 5 minutes of us all being together, Auntie Sarah was reading Mickey Mouse books to the girls, and all three of them were quite happy with this arrangement!Reunited, and it feels so good! Seriously, seeing Tucker was one of the biggest highlights of our trip to Oregon. We miss him so much and we could tell he missed us too! It was wonderful to be together for a little while..Justin was in the same cuddling room as Sarah and the girls, and Brant and Tucker, and he felt a little left out...so he found a good replacement!All the family men with their respective family dogs.Tucker had just as much fun with all the excitement as Ellie and Maddie did! (Either that, or he was just being curious as to what all the hype was about).The girls had fun opening their stockings to find identical sets of presents, like slippers, socks and stickers! And their Great-Aunt Marcia gave them twin baby girl dolls, which were a huge hit! We enjoyed much more than the pictures show on Christmas Day. Our traditional Christmas dinner was fantastic and became a feast in which all six of us (adults) prepared together, which was special. And we enjoyed hanging around the house, conversing, laughing and being a family together. It may or may not also need to be mentioned that over the course of our 2 week vacation, a grand total of 15 family members caught the stomach flu. Without going into anymore details, my turn came late Christmas night. Bleh! It was a 30 hour ordeal, so as miserable as it was, it was a quick turn around for me. Regardless, our entire Christmas celebration was full of joy and love!