Christmas 2014

What a great Christmas we had! I'm finally getting a chance to tell you about it after a very busy January. We had celebrations with lots of family over the course of a few weeks, including a gathering with Justin and Stacey, a cookie-making extravaganza with my sisters, and then Christmas eve/ day fun with both Illinois families. Phew! It was a busy December.

The weekend before Christmas, we had a chance to celebrate with folks at my Dad and Betty's house. Justin and Stacey were in from Georgia and my Grandma was able to come, so we had early Christmas - with gifts, yummy food, and everything!

Grandma Wilmarth was there

And Barry, too!

The WHOLE manning family was there!

Justin and Stacey were in from Georgia for a week

Owen insisted on wear his brand new minion pajamas as soon as he opened them. Here he is post-nap, sans pants. Bed head and all ;)

The following day, we had a great time baking cookies and visiting with my sisters from Missouri. It was the first time we've been able to have all of the kids together in ages... though I forgot to get a group picture :( None-the-less, the photos I got turned out great!

Nana and Owen had a bit of a photo shoot. This was picture 2 of about 10 he was cheesin' for!

MaKayla and I were in charge of rolling out and cutting the dough. We pretty much rocked!

Luke and Maurissa came out for a bit and helped to decorate, too.

Papa and Abigail stood still long enough for this great shot!

Zack and Logan didn't leave the couch much, but they did enjoy checking out their presents.

Julia decorated cookies in the awesome fairy dress-up clothes that Nana has.

Noah was a decorating pro!

A rare picture of the four of us together :)

Us with our parents. Owen snuck in to the picture, too!

On Christmas eve, we headed out to Rochelle. Our first stop was to visit Grandpa Supler at his apartment since he isn't getting around so well these days. While we were there, we got a few good photos of all his visitors!

Grandpa with Mom

Grandpa with some of his great grandkids.

Me, Jen, and Grandpa

Then, we headed to Jen and Ben's house for a great dinner and some present opening. As you can imagine, the kids were so excited. Julia's face (below) says it all!

Frozen puzzles!

Cheese!

My handsome hubby, sporting his bow tie :)

Family photo. And, no. Julia didn't start the evening in an Elsa dress... but you know how it goes!

Mom and Randy

Jen and her "little boy"

You'd never know that Dylan had basketball pants and neon pink knee high socks on in this photo ;)

On Christmas day, we woke up to find some wonderful gifts from Santa and then headed over to Dad and Betty's house for more fun, food, and celebrating.

Santa brought Ana and Elsa for Julia

Our little minion got a giant Spiderman from the big guy

Grandma, photographer extraordinaire!

Playing with some of their cool new toys

Grandpa and Uncle Barry supervised the playing :)

Overall, it was a great Christmas. He had some great visits with our family, enjoyed lots of time together, though we wished we could have seen some other special people that live farther away. Hope you had a great holiday, too!