Oh the adventures we will have...: Riding on broken planes, escalators, and walkers! In other words, our Christmas!

Christmas day blurry family photo... love how it totally
captured the moment!

It has been over a month since Christmas, so I figured it was safe to blog about it. After all, I never want to blog about anything in too timely of a manner. Christmas this year was wonderful, after all we did celebrate it five times!

Our first Christmas was in mid-December when we flew with Steve's parents out to Virginia to visit Steve's brother, his wife, and our two month old niece Louisa! We had quite possibly one of our worst flying experiences ever (not one, but both of our scheduled planes had to be taken out of service due to mechanical issues, which equaled a re-route and arriving about 6 hours later than scheduled - in other words we could have driven there in about the same amount of time). But nevertheless we had a great time meeting the newest member of the family, seeing Christmas lights on Virginia Beach, touring one of the many area naval bases, being pampered by my sister-in-law Rachele's fabulous Italian cooking, and watching the cousins exchange gifts! After a much too quick of a visit I would like to say our return flight went more smoothly, but it was not without a major hiccup as half of the Norfolk Terminal was without electricity! Although we arrived home on time, let's just say the check-in and boarding process could have gone more smoothly...

A long wait in the airport to get to Virginia led to airport shenanigans with Grandpa!

Emma pretty much wanted to hold hands from the moment she met Louisa!

And she wanted to get really close to her...

And she wanted to kiss her...

But she was no match for Aunt Rachele's exercise ball!

Just the girls and their grandparents!

Family photo!

Our second, third, and fourth Christmases were celebrated back in St. Louis. On Christmas Eve we enjoyed spending the afternoon and evening at Steve's parents house along with Steve's oldest brother's family. The little kids had a blast opening gifts and asking Grandpa again and again to run the train around the tree! While Emma had a little bit of a slow start opening her Christmas gifts, it only took an older cousin trying to help for her to quickly figure it out and yell "no! no! no!" so she could do it herself!

Waiting for the train, Emma bear hugging cousin Remington... have you noticed Emma's passion for showing her love?! We may have to work on using a little more discretion in the future, like not just blowing kisses at random people in the grocery store aisles!

Group piano recital!

While Emma awoke on Christmas day feeling less than stellar it didn't stop her from showing her excitement when she saw the Christmas gift from Grandpa and Grandma Souders that her dad spent most of the night putting together, a new kitchen! We enjoyed the laid back morning opening a few more gifts in our pajamas before heading out to spend our fourth Christmas that afternoon with some more of Steve's extended family. It was great to catch up with many people we hadn't yet seen since moving back in the fall. Unfortunately Emma's cold was full force by that time and we didn't last very long into the evening, but it was certainly better than nothing!

Look mom my own microwave!

While this was taken the weekend before Christmas, it pretty much summed up how Emma felt on Christmas day!

Finally our fifth Christmas started the day after Christmas as we boarded a plane for Minnesota to spend several days celebrating with my parents and sister's family. While there we got to spoil and spend more cuddle time with our one month old nephew, Jacob! It was wonderful to get to spend lots of relaxing time with my family, eating lots of wonderful home cooked food and cookies from my mom, and seeking out indoor entertainment for Emma as the temperatures were well below zero for part of our visit (lucky for us we got to leave, the temperatures got even colder after we left). We were pleasantly surprised to see Emma and her older cousin Tabitha play better together than we expected (seeing how the toys at Grandma and Grandpa's were both "their toys"), and opening gifts with more little ones just keeps becoming more fun! We also really enjoyed our last day visiting Underwater Adventures World and Rainforest Café at the Mall of America with Emma. Let's just say I think everyone else who has children in the entire Twin Cities metro area must have also gone there that day...