Christmas in Portland 2010

I love Christmas because it is time for the family to be together and have fun. We were so busy doing that. We went to Christmas Eve service at Chris & Jess's church. Then was came back to their house and had our traditional tamales dinner with Jess's parents joining us. Earlier on Christmas Eve, we took Maryn and Lucy to our hotel for a swim. They loved that. While some of us were at the pool, Chris and Don worked on the bathroom plumbing. After 4 trips to the hardware store, they actually fixed it. (That's amazing because Don hates plumbing) When we returned, Chris focused on his computer that crashed earlier in the morning. Another miracle happened. With the help of a friend of Laurel's and two trips to Best Buy, Chris was able to replace the power source and the computer worked. Chris said he couldn't imagine that both of these big projects could be fixed on Christmas Eve. It was a good Christmas Eve for him. The girls also had fun opening some of their gifts. Then there was the horseracing game that Maryn won. What a wonderful Christmas Eve.

The next morning the we arrived at the Portland Ballanti's early and watched more opening of gifts. It was fun to see the girl so excited about their presents. At 11 we gathered for Christmas brunch. We had exotic fruit provided by Laurel, Nancy's Egg Dish and Christmas Bread made by Jess and smoky links. Yum! Jess's family including her brother Tom and his wife Brit, who just flew in joined us. This was great family time.


Later in the day, we had an outstanding Prime Rib for dinner at Kathy & Doug's house. This was a great Christmas! Check out the pictures for a glance of our Christmas.

Here are Chris and Laurel.
This is Doug working on his fabulous meal. Check out that hunk of meat!

This was the table all set for brunch on Christmas Eve.

Oh, here is the plumbing and computer projects. I can't leave those out.

Here is Maryn all set up for "horse" racing.

This is Matt with Eli. Chris and Jess used to live with Matt and Jess in Carpenteria. I was glad to meet their new addition. Here is Maryn busy with her leapster Explorer.

Oh, and I had to include the picture of everyone playing bananagrams.

And here are two of my favorite girls dressed in their costumes that Santa brought them.

It was a very Merry Christmas!