Christmas with our IL Family

A couple of days after Christmas, we got some visitors!

We loved having a house full of family, laughter, and fun at the holidays. Liam and Joergen absolutely adore their cousins (as do we!), and we couldn't have asked for better week with everyone together.

We had to get a little creative with sleeping arrangements and decided to put the girls (plus Joergen) in Liam and Joergen's room, while Liam and Aidan slept on the futon in the office.  It didn't take long for this sign to show up on the office door:

The morning after they arrived, we had a mini-repeat of Christmas morning to exchange gifts with everyone.  Thank goodness for Papa and his trusty pocketknife to open the tricky packaging on the boys' new toys!

Some of their favorites were Joergen's new Hess truck (they just keep getting cooler and cooler!)...

their awesome new ND blanket from Grandma (which is now always in one of their beds at night)...

and the gift-- Daddy's new train set.  I don't know that I've seen him this excited about a Christmas present in, well, ever!

We can't thank Grandma and Papa enough for such a generous Christmas!

As for the rest of the week, we found plenty to do to occupy our time - and in fact, the week went by all too quickly!  Grandma and Papa treated everyone to a fun afternoon at Dave and Buster's for lunch and games:

Speaking of games, we played many at home, too.  Liam and Joergen loved having opponents for every game their little hearts desired.  (Uncle Tim and Aunt Jackie, this one was a hit!  Thanks for the very fun gift!)

We also had a few enthusiastic games of Disney's Scene It- and with this crowd, I'm pretty sure there was not a single Disney movie that had gone unseen!

We can't talk about all the games played that week without mentioning the other kinds of games that also got some play...

I love Liam's face in that picture, as he tried desperately to learn one of Abby's Pokemon games for the DS.  There is nothing he loves more than being one of the "big kids" - and Abby was one heck of a teacher!  Even Joergen got in on the video game action with some fun preschool games on Grandma's iPhone:

When not playing games, we had a lot of fun just hanging out together.

Can you tell these two are related?!

Monkey pile of cousins!

Early morning PJ time with Papa

Kisses for Grandma!

Enjoying the mild weather with a game of basketball

Their last night staying with us was New Year's Eve- but that warrants a post of its very own :)  Thank you a hundred times over to Grandma, Papa, Toni, Aidan, Abby, and Kate for a fantastic visit!  We love you and can't wait to see you again this summer.