'tis the season!

I don't know about anyone else, but our holiday season starts pretty much right after Thanksgiving, and it doesn't stop until New Year's Day. And with Samma around, it's just makes it all the more enjoyable! And I don't know why, but I've been in the spirit for much longer -- hell, this is the first year I actually started my holiday shopping prior to Thanksgiving, and my sister and I were at Kohls at 1am Black Friday! Yup. Crazy.

So what have we been up to this Holiday season?

First, we have our annual Holiday Brunch with our friends out in Worcester. It's Yankee Swap-style, and for the first year, since there were so many kids, we organized a Secret Santa for the little ones. Samma received fingerpaints from Lexi-- yay!

The following weekend we had our nearby friends and families visit our home for our annual Baby Holiday Festivities. There are only three babies in this group, all within months of each other age-wise, so it's fun watching them interact with each other and open their gifts and whatnot because really, this is what the holiday season is all about! :) This time around we received a Little People amusement park from Auntie Bob, Weebles from Gabe and a Leapfrog magnetic Farmhouse for the fridge from Cole... or maybe it was Weebles from Cole and the Farmhouse from Gabe... it was pretty chaotic! Regardless, everything was much appreciated and all the babies had fun!

Then we had my uncle's annual holiday party. That was fun. And by "fun" I mean absolutely exhausting. Sam definitely seemed to enjoy herself, though. Of course, she's really easy to please so long as she can run around and get to places she shouldn't be with her partner-in-crime, Papa.

This past Thursday was my dad's office party for the kids, and Sam's first time visiting with Santa. As you can see, she was not amused, and for that I am grateful because I didn't have to spend money on Santa picture this year just to have her freaked out. She did enjoy the blow-up Fisher Price wobble penguin Santa "gave" her though (read: I wrapped it up, gave it to my dad, he put her name on it and Santa gave it to her when we visited). It was fun though!

And now, here we are. Tonight was our annual Christmas Eve gathering with Chris' extended family, tomorrow morning brings presents from Santa as well as our immediate families coming to our house for more presents, heading up to my aunt's house tomorrow afternoon for my family gathering, heading back down to southern MA for our annual Yankee and Regifting swaps with our group of friends, and then Monday is our annual gathering with my dad's side of the family.

Sadly, Samma fell asleep in the car on our way home tonight, so we weren't able to leave out cookies and milk for Santa. =( But something tells me Santa won't be missing us this year.... gonna have to make it up to him next year!