So last weekend Brad and I gathered up the family and headed down to Birmingham for Christmas with Pappy and Nana. (For those of you who don't know Pappy and Nana are Brad's parents.) You know when you are packing up enough stuff for two babies, two adults, Christmas gifts, etc. a jeep is not a very large vehicle. At least we don't need a 15 passenger van like Jon and Kate Plus 8! :) Anyway, we finally made it to Birmingham around 6:30 after lots of sitting in traffic. We ate dinner and hung around the house until bedtime. We finally figured out a solution to bedtime without bringing the pack and play (which neither of the boys would have probably slept in anyway). We set up a blowup bed in the floor next to our bed. We thought Nicholas would sleep in it and maybe even Nathan too, but only Nathan slept in it and that was just for part of the night. Brad ended up laying in it for a while with Nathan while Nicholas and I slept in the bed.
On Saturday, Nana made everyone breakfast and then it came time for presents. By that time, Nicholas was getting sleepy as you can see in these two pictures. He got over it a little bit when he realized that it was time to open presents!
So Nicholas really got into opening presents. He wanted to open them all, even if he knew they were not for him. He would tear off the tag of each present first and then tear off little pieces at a time, hand them to me, and say "Thank you Mommy." Eventually he began throwing his own trash away. I guess we are lucky he is a little OCD and wouldn't dare throw his wrapping paper in the floor. It saved us some clean-up time!
Nathan's first Christmas was very special. Since he is almost 9 months now, he could sit up and sort of open presents. He would grab the paper and pull a little, but mostly he just pulled everything to his mouth. Nicholas was happy to open Nathan's presents for him. Nathan was happy to just have a bow to chew on. Poor baby is teething so much that his shirt just seems to stay wet from drool! Nathan received his very own Build a Bear named Bear Bryant II. (Nicholas has the original Bear Bryant.) He also received many other toys and clothing gifts.
Adult present opening began with the drawing of numbers to see who was the "reader" of the present opening rules. Brad won the number drawing and had to wear the reindeer antlers for the official reading. We each received the three gifts of Christmas. Our third gift was a gift for both of us. After opening the first two gifts, it was time to open the third gift of Christmas. Brad and I were very surprised to open the box to find a Nintendo Wii!! We were very excited. Unfortunately I had planned a big surprise of my own and had Brad a Wii already under our Christmas tree. I had to tell Brad that I had him 
a Wii of his own at the house. He had no idea of my surprise. It all worked out okay though. We just sold our Wii to some friends of ours who were searching for a Wii of thier own.Below the boys are playing with their new blocks with Aunt Sarah.
Brad and Matt had to break out the Wii immediately for a little golfing competition. I'm not sure they got to finish playing. Nicholas had to take a trip to the park to play for a while. After all it was about 65 or 70 degrees outside!
Here is the family Christmas picture. It is a little off center, but after cropping it down it looks great. We had not really planned to all wear black, but it just kind of turned out that way. It did make for a great picture though!
