It seems that once you get married and have kids, holidays get a little more complicated - not in a terribly bad way, but balancing time with both families becomes more complex, especially when both sides of grandparents are divorced, like ours. We have a bit of a melting-pot of a family, complete with step-parents, half-siblings, and step-siblings. I literally had to make a spreadsheet to explain all the familial connections to our wedding photographer. Fortunately, our family is pretty amazing and we love spending time with everyone. Ollie essentially has 4 sets of grandparents and Christmas this year happened in three phases so we could spend time with 3 of the four sets of grandparents (my dad was in Wyoming at the ranch this year).
Thus, Christmas Phase One commenced the weekend before actual Christmas. My mom, her husband, John, my sister, Sarah (John's daughter), and her fiance, Eric, (did you follow all that?) all made the trek up to Bellingham to exchange gifts and go to the Seahawks game on Sunday.
Saturday afternoon we exchanged gifts, chatted and then went out to an amazing sushi dinner at Osaka. Ollie received a whole slew of cars from the movie "Cars," including "Sally," which also happens to be my mom's name. We have both been looking for a "Sally" car and have had no luck and then I just happened to find one randomly at Fred Meyer. So now Ollie has a "Sally" car from his Grandma Sally. Too cute.
Ollie was so excited about opening presents this year. It was so much fun to watch. He was insistent on pulling off small individual pieces of wrapping paper, one piece at a time.
My mom made Ollie the most amazing tee-pee for Christmas, complete with a real life deer skin from one of Grandpa John's hunting expeditions. Needless to say, Ollie loves it. He directs us to come and sit in the tee-pee with him. I am quite certain it will provide hours future entertainment.
The "tee-pee" set up in my mom's living room.
On Sunday, we left Ollie in the capable hands of Mylo's dad, Blake and step-mom, Kristi, and headed down to Seattle for the Seahawks game. I was able to get really reasonable tickets through my alumni association. Even though they lost (like usual), it was a blast to go to a live game. We ate lots of yummy, but terrible for you food and enjoyed a little kid fee time with the family. We felt a little guilty for ditching Ollie so we brought him back is own "feet-ball" - which is Ollie speak for football.
2 comments:
That tee-pee is AMAZING. I want to come play in it :) Lets set up a play date! We get back from Hawaii on January 8th.
Ditto. I LOVE the teepee! And I know what you mean about the crazy family ties. I tried making a family tree for us and half of the people on there aren't even related to eachother.
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