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The day after Christmas, we braved the roads (which, thankfully, were no longer dangerously icy) and headed north to spend some time with Eric’s family. We made it to Little Grandma’s house just in time for a delicious lunch, complete with her famous homemade applesauce - YUM!

After lunch was the annual tradition of bushing - an easy game to play where the three loosers are in charge of washing all the dishes. This was my SEVENTH year to play and I’ve yet to wash a single dish (and yes, I know I’m asking for it next year by publicly gloating)!

Next up was Claire’s favorite part of the day - opening presents. Poor thing didn’t seem to get that each person got just one gift, including her. Luckily for her, everyone was super sweet and let her “help” unwrap their gifts. She also enjoyed playing with Rowan, who did an awesome job of sharing his new toys!

Cheesy cheese with GaGa - love this!

Claire, Eric and Little Grandma

Sharing toys with Rowan

Letting Uncle Joe know that she wanted the Elmo slippers she gave him back!

Group picture at Little Grandma’s house

Loving a “ride” from Uncle Michael

Claire was pretty worn out after the day’s activities and conked out in our hotel room before 8:00 pm. Eric and I ate Arby’s in the dark and then watched “The Ugly Truth” on our portable DVD player with dual earphones. It was actually a lot of fun and we joked that it was our “no talking” date night!

We joined Grandpa and the rest of the family at church the next morning. Claire sat through some of the service, but ended up going to the nursery (and having to be drug out she was having so much fun). Eric and I took Claire back to the hotel after church for a short nap. The two of them rested while I ran some errands, then we headed over to Grandpa’s house for lunch and presents. Again it was fun to watch Claire and Rowan play so well together.

Group picture after church - I love Rowan in this one!

Rowan and Claire playing with the cool new toy he gave her

Our family with Grandpa

Claire loved pointing out all of Uncle Ryan’s body parts - especially his “hair”!

That evening we headed over to Big Grandma’s house to visit and let Claire open even more presents. We hated that we weren’t there for the “official” celebration Christmas evening, especially since we missed Eric’s cousin’s family from Virginia….and nobody saved us a piece of Grandma’s chocolate pie!

Claire received lots of nice gifts, most of them with the ever-popular Elmo theme. She also had an especially good time playing with Grandma’s very overweight tootsie roll of a dog.

Family picture with Big Grandma

Opening presents at Big Grandma’s house

There! I’m done with the 2009 Christmas posting - whew! There are gobs, and I do mean gobs, of photos in the December 2009 photo gallery - I had a hard time picking which ones to post because there were so many good ones! Next up is a run down of what Claire is up to at 18 1/2 months….or 19 months…whichever it happens to be when I finally get around to getting the post up.