Christmas Day

Happy New Year everyone! I started class again today so before the semester gets out of control and Al gets crazy busy with tax season, I thought I would at least get our Christmas pictures posted!
Christmas was in MN this year and we realized it was the first time we have had Christmas in our house even though we moved into it in 2006. It was a relatively nice and quiet holiday break for us which was good. We all needed some R&R and time to recoup for the new year!

A quick festive picture of our fireplace with Santa toys laid out (the Nutcrackers are not for Taylor..those are part of our collection). Even though our family room is decked out in wood paneling and old-school ceiling tiles, it's actually our favorite room in the house. It is so cozy in the winter with all the Christmas decorations up. Al and I were commenting the other day that our house looks best during Christmas. ;)

Taylor with her first taste of present opening since her birthday in August. She was pretty excited about it for the first couple of presents.

Her big Santa present was set up in the basement. Our basement is actually not ideal for hanging out in. We plan on refinishing it in the next few years, but until then, Al did a great job of clearing out some space and cleaning up a good spot for Taylor to have a play space. That's where her new tunnel toy was set up. It's four tunnels, an intersecting part and two tents. It's so big that we couldn't put it all in the same space. She LOVED it. I wish we had taken a picture of the whole contraption put together!

Later that morning, we made the 90-mile drive to spend Christmas day with most of my mom's side of the family in Rochester. Not everyone lives in MN, but we had a pretty good number show up.

Four-generation photo with both Grandma Kneeskern's:

Taylor loving her Santa hat that great-aunt Mary let her wear!

The Kneeskern/Voigt women, Grandma, Taylor, Joni and Katrina:

Some of the great-granddaughters, Taylor, Bianca, Mia, Megan and Benaysay:

Almost 50% of the great-grandchildren with great-grandma:

The day after Christmas, we had our immediate family's Christmas dinner and present opening.

Here's daddy helping Taylor clean off her fingers! These two are always cracking me up!

Taylor helping Grandma clean up the turkey. The outfits were a coincidence!

Here a just a couple of additional fun photos of Taylor post-Christmas.

I just bought her some barrettes for her bangs because she won't let me trim them. She looks like such a big girl when she wears them! This is also another classic "cheese" face of hers. ;)

Taylor loves her "ba-bas" and they seem to like her a little too. Here's a picture of her and Chewy hanging out one morning while we were trying to get her dressed.

One of Taylor's most recent Christmas gifts from Mimi (Al's grandma). She bought Taylor her own rocking chair and the first one we received wouldn't go together correctly. So we had them send us another one and just received it on Friday. She loves it!