The Brink Bunch: Dreaming of a White Christmas

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas... we sure did! Since we open gifts with family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Jamie likes for us to exchange our gifts to eachother on Christmas Eve Eve. His gift to me has been in a box so large that it didn't even fit under our tree and has been taunting me of its contents for the past few weeks. So when he brought up exchanging our gifts, I was all for it! I unwrapped the huge green box to discover a desktop computer box. I was excited about it because our laptop had recently bit the dust, however, I was confused as to why he got a desktop rather than a laptop. He informed me to look in the box and to my surprise there wasn't a computer, but 3 smaller boxes each numbered 1, 2, and 3. Inside the 1st box, I found a new purse that I had been eyeing for quite a while... #2 was a new pair of sunglasses, which I had been wanting... and #3 was a new laptop! He knows how disconnected I have felt without the Internet!

Christmas Eve morning we loaded up the boys and headed to my grandmother's house for a delicious breakfast with my dad's side of the family... all 38 of them. Yes, 38... that is the number of people in my immediate family on that side. My dad's 5 brothers and sister, each of their spouses, their kids (my 13 cousins), my cousins' spouses, and my cousins' kids. Following breakfast, the kids opened their gifts and we then feasted on lunch. Instead of the traditional Christmas lunch, we decided to change it up and have appetizers this year. 2010 brought 2 new members into the Powell family, Lynley and Collier. Lynley is my cousin's little girl that was born in April. The addition of these two babies brings the total to 7 great-grandchildren for my grandmother. This year, she wanted nothing more than to have a picture with all 7 of her great-grandbabies. So we attempted this feat and it wasn't easy! Noah had fallen asleep and his nap was interrupted for picture time so as you can imagine, he wasn't in a pleasant mood. In fact, he refused to have his picture made. My mom tried holding him and standing in the picture but that still made him mad. And Coller slept through the whole thing. Despite this, Mawmaw now has her picture!

That afternoon, we took the boys home for a much-needed nap and then later headed to Jamie's parents house to continue the Christmas celebrations. We had dinner and exchanged gifts with his family. Jamie's parents always do a big Christmas and our boys definitely racked up with plenty of toys and clothes. One of the gifts that Debbie got Noah and each of his two cousins were inflatable snow tubes from LL Bean. Little did we know that we would actually get to use ours the following day!

In the past, Jamie and I have alternated spending the night with each of our families on Christmas Eve. However last year, we decided that we wanted to spend Christmas Eve/Christmas morning at our house. So we headed home and once our boys were in bed, we set up the boys' gifts from Santa then settled in to watch Christmas Vacation.

That morning, we woke up to a beautiful blanket of white snow covering the ground! Noah woke up and looked from amazement out the window at our snow-covered yard. He checked out all of his presents from Santa, immediately pick out his favorite, which was Chuck the Truck. Collier sat happily in his bouncy seat taking it all in. My parents, Lindsay and Derrick came to our house early that morning so we could eat breakfast and exchange our gifts to eachother. After breakfast, we got bathed and dressed and headed to my parents' house for lunch. When we got to my parents house, we realized they had alot more snow than we received in Florence. My parents live on a golf course which has several big hills on it... perfect for testing out our new snow tube!

After we ate, Jamie and I went back to our house to get toboggans, gloves, extra layers of clothes and most importantly, the snow tube! We were really curious what Noah would think of it so we bundled him up and Jamie pulled him around the yard in the tube. He was sliding and slipping all over the place and LOVED it! Since he was enjoying himself so much, we took the tube on the golf course and found a couple of really good hills to sled down. Since we weren't sure what his reaction would be, Jamie and I took turns riding down the hill on the tube with him. He laughed the entire time and was having such a good time! After a few times going down the hill with us, we let him sit in the center of tube and go down one of the smaller hills by himself... HE LOVED IT!! After half an hour of so and sledding down the hills, I could tell by his red cheeks and runny nose that he needed to get inside to warm up. Noah began crying once he realized that we were going inside... despite the freezing cold weather, he wasn't ready to go inside! About an hour later, we took him back out and let him play some more since Linday and Derrick had joined us. And again, when it was time for him to go inside, he cried and cried.

I'm so glad I was able to convince Jamie that we needed to go home and get our snow tube because that was definitely a day that none of us will forget...spending our Christmas Day playing in the snow and tubing down the hills; but most importantly seeing that huge smile on Noah's face as he had the time of his life!