Burdorf Christmas

Over New Year's weekend we went to Omaha to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with the Burdorfs.  The weather felt more like Easter, but at least it was good travel weather!

Friday we got to Adam and Jill's just in time to see the Huskers get beat in their bowl game.  HOLLA!!  Sorrynotsorry Husker fans. ;)  Nothing goes better with games than game day food.  Yum!

 Saturday was our "official" Christmas.  We opened gifts.  The Burdorf tradition is one at a time, even the kids and they stick to it. ;)

 Miss Sass was super happy to get these new boots.  Not only are they cute, but they added another couple of inches to her already ever-growing self. 

 

The kids were hilarious.  They had the best time in the basement playing cafe.  You want to know the name of their cafe?  Kozy Korner, of course!!  I know that will make you Armstrong people proud.  We may have talked about it once or twice.  Ha! 

 Adam and Jill were pretty excited to give Aaron his gift.  It was a framed photo from the front page of the Chicago Tribune the day after the Cubs won the World Series.  So cool!

 

Another Cubs gift for this Cubs-loving kid! 

 I made Grandma Linda an updated photo collage (see below) of her grandkids.  I think she liked it! The one hanging up in her house doesn't include Noah or Claire.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out. 

 

 Grandpa Frank travels a lot for his job, so we thought he needed a new jumbo travel mug.

 

 

 We played some Skipbo and even put together a 300 piece puzzle.  This is big because I actually hate puzzles because I have zero patience, but the four oldest and I did it together!

 All eight grandkids.  Not too shabby.

 

Grandma and Grandpa with the tribe. 

 

And...all of us.  The whole Burdorf Bunch. 

 

 After presents, Aunt Jamie was in charge of some New Year's games for the kids and the big kids.  I, unfortunately, didn't get many photos because I was in charge.  We did have a lot of fun with balloons, let's just say that.  We took a break to wish Grandma a happy birthday and have a slice of birthday pie.  

That wraps up our holiday season.  It was definitely a blessed one.  We are so grateful for our family!

Hunecke Christmas

The holidays are over! *sob*  I don't know about you, but I always get sad when it's January 2nd and the holiday season is over for another year.  Taking the tree down?  Don't even get me started.  

Anyway....way back on December 17th we had Christmas with my mom and dad.  This year it was my sister's turn to host, so we headed to Cherokee. My nephew Carter's birthday is in January, so we celebrated that on Friday night too.  

We had fun, as always!  We played cards Friday night.  I talked everybody into playing Hearts, a Hunecke favorite, and it turned into a marathon game.  I didn't win and I can't remember who did. 

Jess and Mitch had two real trees.  I'm so jealous!  This one in their fireplace room was ginormous.  I think my sister said that her boss brought it from Wisconsin.  It seriously must have been 11 or 12 feet tall.

When we get together, there's a lot of boys.  Here Blake and Maddox are clearly discussing something super important. 

Poor Jenna.  She's the odd man, er, girl, out.  We let her be in the older girls picture this year.  We all had to wear our "ugly" or "cute" depending on how you look at it, sweaters.

We're not really good at taking turns when it comes to opening presents.  Pretty much it ends up being complete chaos.  That's Christmas though, right?!

After last year's success at our house with games, Jess planned some games for this year too.  Disclaimer:  These cans were already empty when we arrived in Cherokee!  This game was called chandelier and the kids had to stack cans, 5,4,3,2,1. 

For the adults, it was harder.  We had to stack 1,2,3,4,5.  I was on my #5 and my chandelier tipped over and I LOST to the Mr.  Dang it!  I heard about that for awhile...

Clearly my mother didn't have great luck...haha!

Next up was the cracker face game where you try to get the cracker in your mouth without using your hands. 

 

Our family.  We are loud and crazy and kind of dysfunctional.  I wouldn't have it any other way though. 

Bear looked how I felt after Saturday's festivities.  Sooooo...tired.  I just hung out in front of the twinkly lights and watched a movie.  Pretty, pretty.

Sledding!

If you all know anything about me, you know that I love winter and I love to go sledding.  I have fond memories growing up of sledding and I want to pass that love along to my own kiddos.

When we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family, we were very excited that they had snow in Cherokee and we could go sledding!  An added bonus is that Jess and Mitch's house is on top of a hill, so we could sled literally in their front yard. 

We went Friday when it was snowing and Saturday when it was considerably colder and we could only stay outside for about 30 minutes.  Sunday was the day that it was -22 below and the feels like was -39.  Yikes.

Anyway, sledding...  So much family fun!

 The worst part is always the hike back up the hill, am I right?!

 Maddox is fearless, as always.

 Everybody decided to have a race down the hill.  On your mark, get set,  GO....!

 My favorite part of this photo are everybody's expressions AND the fact that Blake willingly jumped on Uncle Justin's back. 

 Jenna's ride down the hill didn't go so hot....

 The uncles, Justin and Mitch, got the kids involved in a competition to see who could stay upright the entire way down the hill. 

 Guess what?  Justin was the winner!

 Jess and Mitch had to race. 

 Jess didn't win...

 Blake's attempt at going down upright.

 My bearded brother.  He was all frozen and I asked him to take his picture.  I LOVE IT!

 Bowen's attempt at staying upright.  He did pretty well and made it halfway down the hill before...

.... he wiped out.

 McCoy.  Seriously.  The cuteness.

The view from their house.  So pretty, especially while the snow fell. Our snow is all melted here at home, so we're hoping for some snow soon so we can go out and go sledding again!