Christmas with Family

Well we've had one heck of a start to this year. Ever since we got home from Victoria on Dec 30th, there's been nothing but sickness in the house. I was the worst off - sick for a total of 4 weeks - but the boys have been fighting colds of their own all month. I'm only saying this as my excuse for writing such a tardy post about Christmas but it was always my intention to get around to it.
Jamie, Brandon and I were blessed to be able to have Christmas with my family this year. It's been so long since we've had a family Christmas that I had forgotten just wonderful it can be.
We arrived in Victoria on Dec 22nd and right away Brandon was impressed with the lovely little train set my Dad had put around the Christmas tree.  He enjoyed watching it going around and whistling almost as much as he enjoyed hanging out with his big cousin James. For reasons unknown to me, Brandon thought his big cousin was amazing and was like a little shadow to James whenever he was around.
It rained pretty much the whole time in Victoria so we had to make the most of it by visiting other family and playing indoors. This wasn't too much of a hardship for Brandon as most of his second cousins have plenty of toys to play with. When we weren't with other little people, Brandon got a kick out of playing with his Afi. He became so attached that he started talking regularly about "Afi's house" or "Afi's car".
We decided to spend Christmas Eve at my brother's house and stay the night so we could all wake up together on Christmas morning. The excitement Alexa and James had for Santa's arrival was really cute and even contagious. Brandon finally got a real feel for the "Christmas Spirit" that night :) We enjoyed a wonderful meal together and really had fun chatting and catching up. The kids were allowed to open one present each and it happened to be PJ's that Hilary had made for them. Brandon's pyjamas were the same as James and he was over the moon about it (they are still his favourite pyjamas to-date and would wear them out of the house if I would let him).

Brandon was the first one up on Christmas morning at around 7am. We headed upstairs to hear Alexa and James shout with joy that Santa had arrived. We all opened our stockings and enjoyed a lovely Christmas breakfast before getting down to business. I don't know if I'd ever seen a tree so stuffed with gifts and the kids had lots of fun tearing through them. I think it was around early afternoon when all the gifts were finally open.  Brandon received a "Woody" doll from the movie Toy Story that he liked but his favourite gift was either the pyjamas his aunt had made or the "Mack Truck" from the movie Cars. I think he was in heaven just to spend most of the day with James :)

Christmas afternoon was spent playing "Scrabble"and snacking on munchies. The wonderful turkey dinner was served around 5pm and after hearing the kids play their violin and cello, we packed up all our stuff (new and old) and headed back to Mom and Dad's.
The weather remained poor and I caught a cold for the remainder of our trip. It wasn't enough to dampen our spirits though as we managed to get out for dinner one night with Ty and Hilary and enjoy some shopping in bothVictoria and in Sidney.
It was great being with family for Christmas.  We saw both the Swift and the Baldwin clans. To sum up our trip I'd say there was lots of fun, chaos, screaming children and most of all . . . love.