Christmases with the fams

We went back to Illinois for a whirlwind overnight trip last Wednesday to see our families and have a little bit of Christmas with them. On Wednesday morning, we threw the kids into the already packed car, still in their jammies (at 6:45am) and headed out to Decatur. The trip went quick, helped out by our favorite travel accessory, the DVD player. Our first stop in Decatur was Chris and Kim's house. Luckily, everyone was awake and ready to receive their cousins.

From Dec2009

Hmm, they don't look that awake in that photo. Or maybe they're tired of me always taking pictures of them eating together. It is the only time they are not all moving around...

That evening, we went to Jim and Courtney's, who were brave enough to let us and Bitsy and our kids come over to have a Spielman Christmas get together (makin' memories). Talk about a little bit different experience, since the oldes of this set of 7 cousins is 6 years old (Marcus). It was chaos, as you can imagine, opening presents with all these little ones, and I don't think my desire to keep the room organized was appreciated by some of the others :-)

From Dec2009

{Grammy Pammy with her grandkids (from L to R): Cale, Maddie, Abbie, Xander, Ewan, Marcus and Liam}

From Dec2009

Just throwing in a good photo of the 2 youngest Spielman cousins, Abbie (11 mos) and Liam ( 8 mos). It took a few hours and many photos to get one where they were not moving.

The next morning, was Christmas in Decatur with Grammy Linda and Grandpa Jerry and Chris and Kim and the girls. The kids had fun opening their presents and playing with their new games. After lunch, we packed up the car, Tetris style, and headed back to Indiana to get ready for Santa Claus. Linda and Jerry braved the weather to the south and headed for Dallas, and Chris, Kim and the girls trekked up north to see Kim's family. Any, holy cow, I can't believed it rained the entire trip. Wow! I was ready for some dry weather by the time we got home! Anyway, it was a great trip, too short, but fun to see everybody!

From Dec2009

From Dec2009

Angels? The 3 Madonnas? No, wait, it's just Kim, Linda and me in our new wearable blankets!

There are many more photos of this trip, if you click on any of the above they will take you to the rest.