My side of the family spent Christmas at our house this year. With Mom and Dad gone our house has become the Shumway Hotel. Except we’re not charging a nightly rate (hey there’s an idea). Even though things get a little crazy with so many people in the house I am so grateful to have such a close family. I love that we are able to get together so often. Although sometimes we seem to revert to are childhoods and start fighting like little children, we always seem to work it out. We’ve had so much fun together and I wouldn’t trade my family for the world.

The Quinn family has a tradition of unwrapping one gift every hour. So we decided to give it a try this year. I think it worked out really well. Especially for the kids because they were able to enjoy each toy as they opened it instead of just jumping into the next gift. However we were still opening presents till 8:00 at night.

Gavin has loved having his cousins around. The first thing he says when he gets up every morning is, “I’m going to see if Keely’s awake.” Today she wasn’t here when we got up because they had gone to meet some friends for breakfast. He was very disappointed. Then tonight they had to go meet another set of friends for dinner and neither of them could stand another separation, so Keely stayed here to get in a little more playing before bedtime. They are truly best friends and I hope they remain close as they grow.

We have loved having everyone here and will be sad to see everyone go. Hopefully we can all get together again soon.

P.S. Sorry mom and dad! We didn’t get many Christmas pictures because Lisa lost my camera right before Christmas and really slacked with her picture taking. We’ll try to get some more pics of everybody before they all leave.